Running with Scissors
by S. McCoy
Summary: SHIELD's official term for it is "detainment." That's what they call locking Bruce away for eight months in what is, essentially, a windowless 450 square foot apartment, give or take a bit; he's done the measuring and calculations a few times, but the walls always throw him off. An alternative back story for how Bruce Banner ends up working with SHIELD. Eventual Hulkeye.
1. Chapter 1

To be honest, I really don't know what this is or where it's going. Why anyone would need an alternative storyline for Bruce being roped into helping SHIELD in The Avengers is beyond me, but it's what my brain spit out, so I'm running with it. I'm not sure how much canon I'll mess with as the plot progresses (although I will try to stay as true to the original as I can.)

I do not own any aspect of The Avengers, or any of Marvel's other creations.

-M.

Bruce Banner hasn't seen the sun in two hundred and fifty-four days. He misses it. Misses the roasting heat of Brazilian summers, the slow burn of Calcutta's dry season. He misses June through August in Willowdale, doing research with the windows open so the lab still feels like summer, even when the sunlight can't quite stretch far enough to touch him. He's been breathing the same recycled air for two hundred and fifty-four days, and he has to prod his mind away from the speculation of what he wouldn't give for just an hour or two outside.

SHIELD's official term for it is "detainment." That's what they call locking him away in what is, essentially, a four hundred and fifty square foot apartment (give or take a bit; he's done the measuring and calculations a few times, but the walls always throw him off.) It is, if Bruce is honest with himself, one of the better places he's lived. The apartment was newly built when they moved him in, fitted with perks like a washer and dryer and dressed up in shades of muted blue, walls decorated with paintings and photos of nautical themes. It still makes Bruce smirk when he thinks about it in the right mood; one of the top secret agencies in the world hired an interior decorator just to make sure their newest houseguest stayed as calm as possible. He even has a fancy cable package and internet access, although that's monitored closely by SHIELD, and all communication options (email, blogs, anything with a comment button, even Facebook, he learned in a brief surrender to the dull ache of nostalgia) have been blocked.

They do try to keep him relatively happy. When he was first given the tour of the place, Bruce was told that he could make lists of anything he might need (food, clothes, things to pass the time) on the white board in the kitchen. SHIELD, with its cameras in every corner, its gauges that monitor everything from his pulse to his sleep cycle, has no problem translating the lists into bags of supplies left outside his apartment door. The door is his to control; he can lock it or unlock it (as if SHIELD could ever be stopped by the illusion of a locked door); leave it open and pretend that it looks out onto something other than a short hallway and a locked door that seems to be made of solid steel. The walls, too, under their paint and drywall, are lined with steel (he knows this because he's cut into them, just to see.) They're also thick; the walls between the rooms of his apartment are at least a foot and a half wide, probably filled with concrete and rebar under the steel, and he has no idea how many inches or feet separate the outer walls from whichever SHIELD facility has been unlucky enough to house him. He's sure they know it's not going to be enough to contain him in the wrong mood, but it will probably give them time to react.

Every once in a while his requests get a bit too extravagant and they don't deliver. The first time was a surprise; he had asked for powdered magnesium, because reverting to childhood chemistry experiments does pass the time, and it had been absent from the bags on his porch. He asked again twice more to make sure it wasn't an oversight. Now he asks for things just to see if SHIELD will refuse. He feels more in control when he's aware of where the boundaries are; he likes knowing exactly how much freedom he has to work with. He's also tried catching whoever does the drop offs, but they only ever come when he's asleep. Human interaction, apparently, is on the list of things he can't have.

It wasn't so bad at first. Serving out a life sentence in solitary is easier when your prison is sea-themed and comes outfitted with almost all the books and technology you could ask for. Some days it really doesn't feel that different from all his time in hiding, better in some ways. He just has to steer his mind away from ever wanting to leave.

The first month was a lot of pacing, refining his cooking abilities, and catching up on the books and movies he had missed during his time out of the country. He went vegan in the second month, just for something new to do. It fit in nicely with the yoga and meditation. By the third month he was sick of having to think about every meal and reverted back to vegetarianism. In the fourth month he rearranged the furniture for the hundredth time, covered the biggest wall in the living room with the most convoluted equations he could think of, and started sleeping in twenty minute increments six times a day, which he'd read would either make him crazy or make him feel like some kind of superhuman. Five months in and he had slipped back into his usual sleeping habits and was teaching himself Farsi and Hungarian in the fort he's made out of blankets and furniture in the living room. Month six he picked up Fight Club for the first time in four years and started having conversations with the protagonist, first in his head and then out loud. He'd set the table for two and check with the open air to his left before deciding which tv program to watch. They got into a fight about morality once, and Bruce went five and a half days in silence before breaking down and apologizing. In the seventh month Ender Wiggin and Winston Smith joined their conversations. They're still here with him in month eight, but even their support and insight can't stop the rooms from shrinking to the point where he can't take a deep breath.

He's four days into a vision quest when everything changes. It's not a true vision quest, he knows that. He just stopped eating, turned the thermostat up as high as it will go, and lay down on top of the ruins that were his fort before the space became too small to house his anxiety. He hasn't moved since, apart from taking a few sips of water from the Nalgene bottle resting its solid weight on his chest. The protagonist of Fight Club gave him the idea, Ender told him he could understand the need to break his routine, and now Winston sits by Bruce's head and lectures him on what a poor decision this is.

Bruce thinks the knock is a hallucination, except that Winston breaks off in the middle of his tirade to glance at the door. The fact that a figment of his imagination responds to a hallucination of his is not an argument for that hallucination being real, the soft, sane voice in the back of Bruce's mind assures him, just before a second set of raps beat against the door.

Bruce is lying on his back, hips and legs propped higher than his head and water bottle still cradled to his chest. He doesn't know what the correct response is to the sound of knocking on his prison door, and even if he did he's pretty sure there's no way he could execute it. Judging by how he's been feeling, Bruce thinks he probably sweated his muscles out through his pores two days ago, and his thoughts are too far removed from his body to transmit words down to his mouth. Instead, he shifts his gaze towards the door and waits.

A moment of silence gives way to the sound of a key turning in the lock, and then the door opens and a man in a suit enters the room. The man's gaze traces Bruce's form, from the mess of oily curls he hasn't bothered trimming since his incarceration, across five weeks worth of beard growth, down the faded Culver University tee and plaid pajama bottoms that have somehow grown too large for him in the past few months, to where his bare feet are twisted in one of the blankets that once roofed his fort. Bruce hasn't felt embarrassment in a long time, but the way the man looks at him makes him feel like a child caught doing something he shouldn't.

The man gives a slight, professional looking smile and opens the dossier that had been tucked under his left arm. "Hello Dr. Banner," he says in a voice pitched somewhere between gentle and commanding. "I'm Agent Phil Coulson. How are you doing?


	2. Chapter 2

I do not own any aspect of The Avengers, or any of Marvel's other creations. ~M.

* * *

If Agent Coulson notices that the room he's standing in is holding steady at ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit, he does a good job of hiding it. He watches with a look of amused professionalism as Bruce struggles against gravity and four days on no food and limited water to right himself. Bruce is used to the sensation of his imaginary friends peering at him, but to have flesh and blood eyes monitoring his every move makes him feel more than a little self conscious.

Bruce finally makes it to his feet. Ender, Winston, and Noname Protagonist all seem to have vanished in the wake of a real beating heart. He takes a long sip from his water bottle, before dropping it onto the end table beside the couch. It lands with a sloshing thud.

"Hi," Bruce says. He clears his throat, licks his lips, and tries again. "Hello."

"Hi," Coulson responds, his face breaking into a smile that feels a little forced.

Bruce had almost forgotten, in this room with his imaginary friends, the way that people who know his secret always look at him with wariness. Coulson wears it in the crow's feet at the corners of his eyes. He's better at hiding it than most.

Coulson shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and the image of him walking back out the door explodes in Bruce's mind. Panic ignites his nerves and spills through his veins.

"I have tea," Bruce blurts out. "Would you like some? I can make it."

He doesn't wait for Coulson's response. He stumbles away from the ruined fort, stopping at the thermostat to turn the A/C on max before moving into the kitchen. He fills up the electric kettle and hits the 'on' button.

Bruce turns around and jolts when he sees that Coulson has followed him into the kitchen. "I don't have anything with caffeine, obviously," Bruce says. "But I do have a pretty good selection."

Bruce has to lean a bit closer to Coulson to open the cupboard that houses his tea and mugs, and he pulls back as soon as he opens it, the anxiety-controlled part of his mind worrying that Coulson will somehow be put out by Bruce drawing so close. He's a mess, he knows. Bruce can smell the stale twinge of his own sweat when he moves, and the visual can't be any better. He runs a quick hand through his hair, his fingers getting caught at the back of his skull. Bruce tries again before giving up and turning his gaze towards the kettle, willing it to boil.

Coulson picks out his tea and mug in silence. Bruce glances sideways and notes that he picked a cup with sailboats around the outside, part of the original apartment furnishings. After a second of consideration, Bruce reaches into the sink and pulls out a chipped mug with a caffeine molecule printed on the side; he likes a bit of irony mixed in with his morning drink routine. He rinses it out before adding one of the used teabags that are drying on the back of the sink. He's never been one to reuse teabags—he only saves them there because he's started a compost bin (his current goal is to get some full spectrum light bulbs and see if he can start an herb garden in his bedroom) and it's easier to let them pile up on the edge of the sink and then transfer them to the bin all at once than to pull the bin out every time he makes tea—but this way he doesn't have to reenter Coulson's personal space.

The kettle whistles, and Bruce takes a step back and gestures toward it. Coulson pours his water, dossier tucked back under his arm.

"We can sit at the table," Bruce rasps, and Coulson nods and exits the kitchen, giving Bruce room to pour his own water.

There are only two chairs at the table, and Coulson's already seated in one. Bruce tries to be subtle about pulling his own just a bit farther away from the other before he sits, back rigid and fingers white-knuckled around his mug. He's never been good with people, and not seeing any for so long is not helping matters.

"Thanks for the tea," Coulson says, gesturing to the mug resting to the side of the papers he's spreading out across the tabletop. "How are you doing?"

It's the second time he's asked, and Bruce still has no idea how to answer. Instead, he looks down at the papers filling his table. From what he can read upside down, it's all information about him. One stapled packet looks like it's a complete history, while another seems to be an hourly write-up of his vitals. He can't tell how far it goes back, but it's almost thick enough to be considered a novel. A third lists everything he's asked for in a cramped Excel spreadsheet. There are also loose leaf pages with notes about behavior changes. Bruce is sure this is all in a computer file somewhere, so why Coulson would need hard copies is beyond him. Unless it's for some kind of show.

"I'm tired of being here," Bruce says finally.

Coulson nods. "I'm sorry about that. Is there anything we can do to make your stay more enjoyable?"

Bruce snorts a laugh at the use of the word 'stay,' like he's vacationing in the Bahamas. It turns into a cough, and then he's hunched forward, one hand plastered to his mouth while his other arm wraps around his torso as he chokes on nothing. His head spins, probably from the four day fast, and he can't get a real breath.

Coulson waits for the coughing to subside, waits until Bruce stretches his back straight and has both hands wrapped around his mug again before speaking. "We've noticed that you've picked up some unhealthy behaviors recently. I'm here because SHIELD wants to make sure you are thriving as well as can be expected given the circumstances. How do you think we could best help you?"

Bruce stares at the photo of blue and yellow buoys lined up along a dock just behind Coulson's head and wonders if the agent knows how cruel it is to dangle hope just beyond your victim's reach.

"What destructive behavior?" he asks.

Coulson picks up one of the sheets. "You talk to and attempt to interact with fictional characters, your food and liquid intake has been severely limited, your sleep patterns have been inconsistent at best, and you seem to have given up on personal hygiene."

"It's hard to keep myself looking presentable when there's no one around to impress," Bruce tells the buoys.

Coulson doesn't smile at that. He gives a slight nod and lays the paper back down on the table. "You've had eight months of good behavior," he says. "We've decided to consider giving you a bit more freedom, if you're ready for it."

Bruce stares at him. He runs his tongue along the seam of his mouth to make sure his jaw hasn't fallen open on accident. "What does that mean?"

"It means visits from off duty agents, if any are interested. There's also the possibility of supervised field trips outside of your apartment."

It's too much. Bruce peels his hands off of his mug and wraps his arms around himself. He's finally started coming to terms with the idea that he might never see another human being again, never again smell fresh air or feel the rain or hear the sounds of the city unless they've been recorded and transmitted through speakers. His two hundred and fifty-four day in isolation have felt just as long as his entire life up until the moment he was locked away, and everything beyond these steel and concrete walls is just hope and theory at this point.

"What do I have to do?"

"You need to prove to us that you're stable," Coulson says. "Eat right, sleep regularly, spend a bit of time on personal grooming. It would be good not to talk to yourself quite so much."

"For how long?"

"A month is the set time frame at this point before we'll officially consider changing your clearance level, but depending on how quickly you can make the changes we might be able to cut that down. I'd say a couple of weeks isn't out of the question."

Bruce nods. Eating and grooming shouldn't be too much of a problem. Getting proper sleep and keeping the voices contained to his head will be harder, but new projects are always the best way to pass the time. He just can't think about what it will mean if he fails. "And then I'll be able to leave here?"

"Not at first. We'll want to see how you interact with people in a space you're comfortable with before we let you out. Once you've proven you can do that you'll be able to visit other areas for limited periods of time under close surveillance," Coulson explains. "You won't be allowed outside the building, at least not for a while, but it'll give you a bit more room to roam around."

"Okay," Bruce says.

If Coulson expects more of a response, he doesn't show it. The agent sweeps his papers together and tucks them back inside the dossier.

It's only when he starts to rise to his feet that Bruce realizes he's planning to leave. Bruce reaches for him, wrapping bony fingers around his wrist for an instant before releasing them. He jerks his arm back and hopes the contact will not be the catalyst to hasten Coulson's retreat. "Would you like more tea?" he asks, voice ringing in his ears.

Coulson pauses and Bruce can already read the 'No' that's broadcasting itself across his face. Then Coulson blinks and the lines soften. "Sure," he says, lowering himself back into his chair.

Bruce all but springs from his seat to get the kettle. "New tea bag?" he asks over his shoulder.

"This is fine," Coulson responds.

Bruce would prefer not to reuse the recycled teabag stuck to the bottom of his own mug, but he doesn't want to waste the time getting another one when he only has a limited number of minutes before Coulson finishes his drink and heads for the door.

Bruce already knows what's going on in the world for the most part—he keeps himself up to date on global news—and while he's sure there's plenty going on with SHIELD that hasn't been picked up on by the media, he assumes it's not going to be anything Coulson will feel at liberty to share.

So instead of asking questions or attempting small talk he stares at the agent over his cup of tinted water and tries not to look too unstable as he studies the way Coulson's breath shifts his chest, the way his muscles direct every move of his hands and twitch of his face. The specters who have kept Bruce company are no comparison to the real thing. He can still feel the skin of Coulson's wrist against his fingertips, and in a lapse of sanity he wishes he could hug the man—wrap his arms around the agent's torso and tuck his face into curve where his neck meets his shoulder to relearn what human contact feels like. He's touch starved, he knows that, and there's the nagging fear in the dark parts of his mind that whisper how, once this man walks out, there's no guarantee anyone's ever going to come back for him.

Coulson finishes off his drink, carries his mug into the kitchen, and leads the way into the living room. "Thanks again for the tea," Coulson says. "Let us know if there's anything you need."

He holds out his hand.

Bruce hesitates for a moment before taking it.

Coulson's handshake is firm. He pulls his hand back before Bruce can fully process the experience.

"Have a good afternoon," Coulson says as he steps out the door.

Bruce stares after him for longer than is probably safe for a man trying to convince a secret agency that he is a sane individual. Then he runs a hand over his face, notes the stubble that's threatening to turn into a full beard, and heads for the bathroom.


	3. Chapter 3

I do not own any aspect of The Avengers, or any of Marvel's other creations.

-M.

* * *

It's been twenty-nine days and Bruce knows he's been played. He knew it two days in. Obviously SHIELD wouldn't send their own people in to keep the man who turns into a monster entertained. And there's no way in hell they would be foolish enough to let the man they spent so much time working to contain loose in other parts of their facility. Bruce is never going to leave this place, he knows that, but the hope of 'what if' is too damn strong. Strong enough that he gets up every morning, shaves, puts on real clothes, eats a decent breakfast, and then spends the day waiting because maybe today, maybe, if he's lucky and SHIELD is feeling low on brain power, someone will slip up and he'll be visited again.

He's watching a special about the progression of Stark Industries through the years when there's a knock at the door. His heart jumps into his throat and he jerks to his feet, switches off the tv, and walks to the door with faltering steps. He can feel his pulse in his temples and he starts to worry. It's not fast enough to be dangerous, but it's certainly faster than usual. SHIELD, with all their monitoring devices, has no doubt already picked up on it. They're probably already considering aborting the mission of whoever's on the far side of the door.

Bruce forces the tension out of his shoulders, takes a few slow breaths, and reaches for the doorknob.

Large blue eyes and a gentle smile set in a face framed with fiery curls greet him.

She's not tall or imposing, this woman dressed in casual clothes with a book bag hung over one shoulder, but there's something calculating in the way her eyes scan quickly over his face, down his body, past him to what she can see of the room beyond, and then back again.

"Hello Doctor," she says. "Do you mind if I come in?"

He takes a step back, giving her room to enter without taking his eyes off her. He knows the fear that if he blinks she'll vanish is irrational, but he's not going to test it, just in case.

"Tea?" he offers.

The woman inclines her head just slightly. "No, thank you; I'm fine."

"Would you like to sit down?" Bruce tries, gesturing vaguely toward the couch.

"Thanks," she says, and steps across the small room to settle on one end of the sofa.

Now Bruce has a problem. The couch is the only seat in the living room, and he's pretty sure sitting down on the other side, even with an empty cushion between them, is too close. No one wants to feel crowded by a monster waiting to happen.

He closes the front door, trying to think. He grabs one of the chairs from the kitchen table and plants it on the far side of the living room. The couch is lower than the chair, so Bruce feels a bit like he's towering, but he haunches his shoulders and decides it's the best option available.

It's only when the woman's smile stretches a bit further along her cheeks that he realizes he hasn't said anything since they sat down. He took a vow of silence, more or less, twenty-nine days ago in hopes of convincing SHIELD that he was sane enough for an encounter like this, and now he's having a hard time remembering how conversations work.

"I've read that you seem to have an interest in languages," the woman says. "Have you ever studied Russian?"

Bruce shakes his head, catches his silence, and then says, "No."

"I could teach you some if you'd like." The woman reaches into her bag and pulls out a textbook and a couple notepads. "My name is Natasha, by the way."

"Thank you. I'm Bruce." He feels foolish as soon as the words leave his lips. She probably knows him right down to his date of birth and last five addresses.

Natasha hands him a notebook and a pen, and they get started.

It's a rush. Natasha fills his head with vocabulary, sentence structure, and verb conjugations. She starts by teaching him a few useful phrases, but it's clear she thinks it's time wasted when he doesn't know the structure behind them.

Bruce is slow at it, slower than Natasha would like, he can tell, although she is patient with him in a cool, controlled sort of way. Her teaching method is solid—Bruce assumes the formatting of it is something created by SHIELD to help new recruits pick up foreign languages as quickly as possible, but he's having trouble with focusing on what he's learning when he's so busy trying not to look like he's staring at her. Every time any part of her shifts he has to study it, catalogue the action, and try to remember if it's supposed to be body language or just part of being human.

He's counted her breaths since she walked in the room. It's not the sanest behavior, he knows; it's just one more way for him to hold onto these moments of not being alone.

Natasha shifts her position and slides a cell phone out of one of the side pockets of her bag. She glances at it, and fear clumps solid in Bruce's chest. He may be out of practice, but he remembers what glancing at the time when you're with someone means.

"Are you sure you don't want anything to drink?" he asks quickly. "Or something to eat? I don't have much to choose from right now, but if you give me a couple of minutes I could throw something together."

The contours of Natasha's face slip into a faint imprint of pity, and Bruce's pulse is pounding in his temples again, a beat for the mantra in his mind of 'Please don't go, please don't go, please don't go.'

"I need to get some paperwork done and in to Coulson before he wraps up for the evening," Natasha says. She smiles, stands, and pulls her bag back onto her shoulder. "Keep practicing. I'm going to try to come back tomorrow, but I can't make any guarantees. In the meantime I'll ask Coulson to make sure someone's stopping in to see you at least once a day. You look like you could use it."

"Thank you," Bruce says, shadowing her retreat to the door.

Natasha gives a nod, and then she's closing the door behind her and Bruce is choking on the terror of being alone again.

He presses his palms to the door and squeezes his eyes shut. He knows better than to trust people who work for agencies like SHIELD, but hope is dangerous because there's nothing you can do to pluck it out once it's taken hold. So he leans forward, centering his forehead above his palms and wills Natasha to remember him, to come back for him, to keep him from cycling down into madness.

* * *

It's Coulson standing in Bruce's doorway the next day. Bruce, ready for Russian lessons, tries to think of small talk questions as he offers the agent tea.

Coulson says, "Any type is fine," before he drops down onto the couch and turns the tv to TLC.

Bruce brews two cups of English Breakfast (decaf) and places them on the coffee table. The chair from the day before never made its way back into the kitchen, so Bruce angles it toward the television and settles in.

They only talk on the commercial breaks, and it's usually just Coulson making snide comments about the sales pitches. It feels normal and natural and Bruce loves it. The anxiety in the back of his mind monitors his every word and gesture and wonders if he's doing 'laid back' correctly.

Coulson leaves at the end of the show.

He comes back again the next day, stays for another full episode of whatever's on, and then heads back to work.

It's two more days of Coulson, before a woman named Maria Hill takes his place the next afternoon. Maria strikes Bruce as the classic agent. She comes dressed in her SHIELD uniform and leans against the wall rather than taking a seat, causing Bruce to stand awkwardly in the middle of the living room, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. She talks with all the intensity of an interrogation, and she does Natasha's trick of scanning him, then the room, then him again, except Natasha knew how to turn it off.

She only sticks around for forty-five minutes, but Bruce almost thinks maybe that is plenty.

Coulson's back to watch Toddlers in Tiaras the next day.

Bruce turns the kettle on in anticipation the afternoon after, but no one comes.

It's late in the evening and Bruce has already changed into his pajamas and brushed his teeth when there's a knock at the door. He opens it to find Natasha staring back at him.

"Sorry I'm late," she says. "I got called out on a mission."

She's in civilian clothes again, but her left eye is bruised and there's twenty-odd stitches running a jagged line up her left arm. Bruce isn't that kind of doctor, but he thinks they look fresh enough that they should probably still be covered.

"I was going to wait and come in the morning," Natasha tells him. "But Coulson said no one had been here today. I thought I'd say 'hi' before you went to bed."

"Are you okay?" Bruce asks.

She grins at him. "I'm fine, thanks for the concern."

"Would you like some tea?"

"I don't want to keep you if you were about to go to sleep," she says.

Bruce snorts. "All I do in here is sleep and waste time; you're not exactly cutting into my schedule." He's quiet for a second, before he realizes the potential politeness in her words. "Unless you wanted to get out of here. I'd imagine keeping a prisoner company isn't high on your list of things to do on your time off."

Natasha studies him for a moment before sliding past him into the room and reclaiming her spot on the couch. "How's your Russian coming?"

"Moio sudno na vozdušnoy poduške polno ugrey," he says as he sits.

Bruce hasn't heard Natasha give a real laugh before. The sound dances abruptly into existence. "Your hovercraft is full of eels?"

"I've been using the internet to supplement the textbook you gave me."

"I don't think that's going to help you much in the long run," Natasha says, toeing off her shoes and tucking her feet beneath her.

"You were from Russia originally, right?" Bruce guesses. At her nod he continues. "Do you get to go back there often?"

She shrugs. "Sometimes work takes me there, but I don't go to visit. I don't exactly have cherished childhood memories from my time in the Motherland."

Bruce nods and knows he should head back to the shallow waters of safe topics, but he asks, "So where's home for you then?"

"The SHIELD barracks, most days, and then a safe house somewhere off the map when I need a break from that." Natasha's tone is flippant, but there's something in the meter of her words that makes Bruce wonder if she's much more careful about what she chooses to share than she lets on.

"How about for you?" she asks.

"Willowdale, although I don't think I'll ever go back there after everything." Bruce doesn't need to elaborate; she's read his file. "I guess this is home now. It has clean water and wifi, which are pluses."

"It'll be even better once they give you access to the rest of the building."

"'Better' right up until the moment I lose control." Bruce can feel his mouth quirking into a smile, but he knows it's not a pleasant one.

"This is SHIELD," Natasha says. "No one does precautions like we do."

Bruce glances down at the stitches on her arm. "That would be more convincing if you weren't currently wounded."

She shakes her head. "Different circumstances; one experienced agent in the field is not the same as a building full of employees. Plus, you want things to go well just as badly as we do. It's easier when everyone's on the same side."

"Everyone except the other guy," Bruce notes, before he voices the question that's been eating at him since Coulson's first visit. "If they do decide it's okay, how long do you think it will be before I get to see other parts of the building?"

"I've already turned in a report stating that I think you're stable enough for higher clearance, and Coulson likes you, which is much more important. I think all that's left is Fury's signature. You're not a top priority, but I don't think it will be more than a week unless there's a crisis."

Bruce nods. He's flirting with hope again. The daily reinforcement of the idea that they won't leave him alone again isn't exactly a determent.

The sound of buzzing fills the air and Natasha slides her phone from her pocket, glances at the screen, tucks it away.

"Coulson's wondering why my write up isn't on his desk yet," she tells him.

"You'd think he'd give you some extra time for being injured," Bruce says.

"This is the extra time," she says with a laugh. One of her joints cracks as she rises to her feet. "SHIELD tries to give out down time for agents who've been stabbed, so I should be back to visit tomorrow."

"Doesn't giving out vacation time for getting wounded send the wrong message to their employees?" Bruce asks. "There have to be some days when you wonder if doing the job right is worth it when you could get yourself scuffed up a bit and spend a week on the beach or something."

"SHIELD has a few rules in place to deter that kind of behavior." Natasha's lips are pressed into a smile, but her eyes look him over like she's searching for something as he follows her to the door.

He leaves a buffer of five feet between them and wonders if he said something wrong. "Good luck with your paperwork."

"Thanks," she says. "I'll be back soon."

Bruce nods after her, is still nodding as she closes the door between them. Then he tucks himself to bed and lies awake, wondering about the future.


	4. Chapter 4

I do not own any aspect of The Avengers, or any of Marvel's other creations.

-M.

* * *

The latest knock on Bruce's door comes at 11:37am the next morning. Natasha greets him with a grin.

"We brought lunch," she says, gesturing with the six pack of Guinness in her left hand to the man behind her carrying two pizza boxes. "Bruce, this is Clint."

"Hi," Bruce says, stepping out of the way so they can enter.

Clint looks like he was just pulled away from his latest mission. He's in a sleeveless uniform and there's a bow and quiver full of arrows strapped conspicuously to his back. He does the SHIELD visual once-over (Bruce, room, Bruce again) with a scowl carved into his features before he follows Natasha's lead to the coffee table.

Bruce wonders, as he goes into the kitchen to get plates, if the uniform and the weapons are because of him.

Clint and Natasha are sharing the sofa when he returns to the living room. Natasha's shoes are on the floor and she's sitting sideways so that her knees are bent and her feet are tucked under Clint's thigh. The bow and arrows are propped up against Clint's side of the couch.

"I didn't know what kind you'd want, so one of them is half pepperoni, half cheese and the other is half vegetarian, half supreme," Natasha says with a nod to the pizza boxes as she reaches for a beer. She's wearing long sleeves and a healthy coat of concealer today, but the skin around her eye still doesn't look quite right.

"How are you feeling?" Bruce asks her.

"Better than I did yesterday," she says, before wiggling one of her feet to get Clint's attention. "Grab me a slice of the supreme."

Clint follows her command before loading a plate up for himself. Bruce reaches for a slice of vegetarian and the silence starts to feel heavy.

"Is sharing food with the incarcerated a common SHIELD practice?" he asks. "It doesn't seem like the most effective way to punish someone or get information."

"You're not exactly Public Enemy No. 1," Natasha says, licking pizza sauce off her thumb.

Bruce bites the inside of his lip and focuses on the design on the pizza boxes. She's being nice and he doesn't want to ruin it by mentioning that, if the evil in man is measured by destruction and murder, he's a damn terrorist.

He's so used to silence that it takes him a bit should to notice that it's set in again. Bruce glances up to find Clint and Natasha watching him. He winces and covers it with a smile. "Sorry, I was just thinking about something."

"Something like how you turn green and crush cities?" Clint asks. For the sour expression that hasn't left his face since he arrived, the words are more curious than harsh.

"Yeah," Bruce says. "Something like that."

"Why did you infect yourself in the first place?"

Bruce sets the slice of pizza he's only had one bite of back onto his plate and recites the words he's explained in his mind a thousand times. "We were trying to see if there was a way to make humans immune to gamma radiation. The theories and equations seemed sound, so the next step was experimentation."

"Yeah, I read that," Clint says. "But why you? Isn't that the whole point of lab rats?"

"We tried it with lab rats, but unfortunately the DNA makeup of rats is just different enough from that of humans that the data we got was inconclusive."

Clint inclines his head a bit. "Then why not get death row inmates to volunteer or something? You had military backing, right? Couldn't they have pulled some strings for you?"

"It was dangerous," Bruce explains quietly. He's always been embarrassed about this part. "If I'd been thinking I would have run through everything again, tried one more time to find a problem, but we were excited about the possibility of success and everything seemed sound, so we figured, why not test it? It had to be me, because I was the one who headed the project up. I knew it was dangerous and I knew we should have spent more time working through the calculations. I wanted to know what would happen, but I wasn't stupid enough to stick someone else under the ray. I just wasn't smart enough to keep myself out of there as well."

Bruce isn't quite sure what Clint is going to do with that information, so he jumps when the agent barks a laugh.

"Damn," Clint says. "That's one hell of a consequence for not triple-checking your work."

Natasha breaks into a smirk at Clint's laughter, but her eyes stay on Bruce, and he suspects that she's feeling out his mood, just in case.

He smiles back to let her know he's okay. He might not have expected Clint's reaction, and maybe it's not the most empathetic response the agent could have had, but there's nothing cruel in his words, and Bruce has been under his own curse long enough that he can deal with with someone finding humor in it.

"At least it's a lesson I'm not going to forget anytime soon," Bruce notes.

"I think we all have lessons like that," Natasha says, glancing at Clint. He returns her gaze, smile falling from his lips.

Bruce looks between the two of them and his first reaction is to scoff internally. It's not like they have anger-fueled beasts trying to crawl out of their bodies, but the expression the agents share is somber enough that he has to wonder what he's missing.

Their look only lasts a second, before Natasha turns back to Bruce. "Are you up for more Russian? Clint could use the practice, too."

"Hey, I'm practically fluent," Clint counters.

"Maybe," Natasha says. "But your accent is so thick that no pure-blooded Russian will have any idea what you're saying."

The textbook and notepads are sitting underneath one of the pizzas, and Natasha retrieves them.

They spend the next hour and a half working on the language. Clint is as good as he claimed, but Natasha seems to have much less patience for him than she does for Bruce; all of her corrections of his accent come in the form of sharp reprimands. Clint smirks at her and tries again, sometimes with better pronunciation, sometimes with an exaggeration of his accent just to see her reaction.

Bruce wants to ask how long the two have known each other, and whether he's watching the interactions of lovers or just close friends, but he's somewhere between too timid and too smart to voice his curiosity.

Natasha calls an end to their practice long before Bruce is ready for it. Clint asks if he wants the leftover pizza and beer, and Bruce explains that he's off alcohol because of his condition. He does take a couple more slices of vegetarian to add to the half-eaten one on his plate when it becomes clear that sharing what's left is more than just a flippant nicety to Clint.

Natasha dog-ears a few pages in the textbook for Bruce to work on, and then he's walking them to the door and trying convey how much he appreciated them stopping by without sounding desperate or crazed.

The way Natasha smiles at him makes Bruce think that maybe he was successful, but he doesn't have enough time to analyze the expression fully before they're gone and he's left staring at the doorjamb trying not to panic because neither of them mentioned anything about coming back again.

He closes his eyes and walks himself through a breathing exercise while systematically tensing and relaxing the different muscle groups in his body. The whole routine takes about five minutes to complete properly, and by the end of it he no longer feels like he's imploding.

Noname Protagonist appears at his side and guides Bruce into the kitchen to make some tea. He knows that Bruce isn't allowed to talk to him anymore, but that doesn't stop him from explaining the proper construction of a pipe bomb while Bruce sips his drink and wonders where Ender and Winston have gotten to.

* * *

The knock comes early the next morning. Bruce is holding a half-eaten slice of toast in one hand as he answers it. He can hear the mumblings of a conversation on the other side of the door in the instant before he pulls it open, revealing Clint, Natasha, and Coulson.

He tenses and he wonders if SHIELD sent three agents because he did something wrong.

Natasha smiles at him. "We got Fury's signature."

Bruce blinks, trying to remember what that means.

"Hope you've got some shoes and a jacket," Clint says. "We were thinking you might like to see the roof."

Bruce starts shaking. His brain screams at him to calm down because there's no doubt that anyone trained by SHIELD is going to be able to pick up on the way he's had to lock his knees to keep himself upright. He covers his mouth with his fist and closes his eyes.

The three agents are still standing there when he opens them again.

"Bruce, it's okay," Natasha says gently. Her expression has softened from exuberance to comfort. "If that's too much for today we can go slower. We'll work up to it."

Bruce shakes his head and "No!" leaks between his fingers. He takes a breath and lowers his hand. "No, sorry, I'm sorry, I do want to go.

"Please," he adds as an afterthought.

"We do have one condition," Coulson says, raising his hands a bit. He's holding what looks to Bruce like a shock collar between them. "For your safety and the safety of everyone in the building you have to agree to wear this for the duration of your time outside your apartment."

Bruce reaches for it, turning the collar over and inspecting the metal box that's attached to it.

"It's heart rate activated," Coulson explains. "If your pulse gets above 190 this will inject thiopental into your jugular. We had some trouble calculating the dosage—we wanted to make sure it was strong enough to have some effect on your alter-ego without using so much that it stops your heart if the dose is administered while you are still mostly human. It's not perfect, but it's better than ignoring precaution altogether."

This should probably be considered insulting, Bruce thinks; Being treated like a dog and all that. He's already got the collar around his neck and is fumbling with the clasp between his shaking hands. There is no pride in desperation.

He stumbles to his bedroom, pulling on his shoes and reaching for a jacket. He zips it up all the way to cover the collar.

Coulson makes him pull the edge of the jacket down for a moment to prove that the collar is still in place, metal box situated over his jugular vein, before he steps back into the hallway.

Bruce moves slowly to follow and Natasha falls into pace at his side. Clint follows behind them.

Coulson pulls out his phone and gives an order. The bolts in the door hiss and it slides open.

"You ready?" Coulson asks, glancing back at Bruce.

Bruce nods and fists his hands at his sides to keep them from wrapping across his stomach.

They walk out of Bruce's universe and through the white-washed walls of a SHIELD facility.

The halls are abandoned, although Bruce can see people working or, more often, staring as they pass by windows that look into several of the facility's other rooms. The rest of the building seems to be aware of this little excursion. He wonders if they've done drills for it.

Bruce is still shaking, but he's able to follow Coulson without too much trouble. Natasha glances at him every few feet and he can feel Clint's eyes on the back of his neck, but his heartbeat is only mildly elevated; not enough to cause serious worry.

He might actually see the sky today.

"It was drizzling when we last checked," Natasha tells him. "We were hoping you'd get some decent weather, but that didn't quite work out."

"No, that's fine," Bruce says. "I'd take hail the side of basketballs if that was in the forecast for today."

Behind him, Clint snorts a laugh.

They reach the elevators and one is already waiting for them. Coulson presses the button for floor thirty-seven. The elevator doors are mirrored, and Bruce tries to straighten his hunched reflection as they rise.

From floor thirty-seven it's a short walk around a corner to get to the flight of stairs that will take them to the roof. Coulson reaches into his pocket for a key as they arrive at the door at the top.

He glances back to meet Bruce's gaze with a smile before he twists the key in the lock and opens the door.

It's the smell that hits Bruce first. He thought he'd forgotten the smell of rain, but he recognizes it immediately. He follows Coulson's lead out onto the roof, where he can feel the raindrops on his face and hands. Bruce has turned the shower to cool before and stood under it with his clothes on and his eyes squeezed shut, pretending that it was a downpour, but there is no comparison. The sky is pale gray and he can see the tops of buildings in all directions. There are planter boxes and trees on some, and he has to wait for his eyes to adjust to far distances again before he can make out the details. Over all of it is the touch of the rain and the smell of things being rinsed clean. He'd assumed SHIELD would be the type to have underground bunkers in the middle of nowhere, but this is so much better.

His perspective changes, and Bruce wonders about it until he realizes that his legs have given way and he is kneeling at the edge of the markings for a helipad. He scrubs at his eyes with the palms of his hands to keep his vision from blurring as he wonders how pathetic he must appear to the agents who have surrounded him in a distant circle, their gazes studying the skyline and only monitoring him in passing. It's probably the closest they can come to giving him privacy.

Bruce pulls off his jacket and rolls up the sleeves of his shirt, resting his arms on his knees to feel as much of the rain as possible. He's given up trying to stop the tears and he sits with his head tipped back and his eyes open to the sky above him, pant legs soaking up the moisture of the wet concrete.

He waits until the only water in his eyes is from the rain before he climbs back to his feet and starts toward the roof's edge, wondering what he'll see when he looks straight down.

Natasha steps in his way. "You need to stay near the middle of the roof," she tells him. "We know you could survive a fall from up here."

Something flickers in the corner of Bruce's vision and he looks sideways to see that Clint has drawn his bow and has an arrow trained on him. He looks around for Coulson, and finds the agent flanking his other side, a gun drawn.

Bruce can feel mania bubbling in his chest and he wonders if he should tell them that the quickest way to realize their fears would be to shoot him.

He stifles the emotion and holds his palms outward and open, taking a few steps back. Coulson lowers his weapon first. Clint waits a few long moments before following suit.

"Sorry," Bruce says.

Natasha shakes her head. "You didn't know."

The wind picks up and Bruce shivers, realizing that somewhere between his room and the roof he managed to stop shaking continually. He debates putting his jacket back on, but he gives up the idea after a minute; he wants to experience as much of the weather as possible.

He walks in slow circles around the parameter of the helipad, trying to take in the view from all angles. The agents have backed off again, once again pretending to let him have a private moment.

There are enough skyscrapers surrounding them that Bruce knows they're in a major city, but he can't see any landmarks that would tell him which one.

He doesn't know how long they stay up there. Enough time for his clothes to get soaked through and his hair to start sticking to his forehead and the back of his neck. Not nearly long enough.

It's Coulson who breaks the silence, stepping close with an apologetic smile. "Sorry, we're out of time for today."

Bruce's knees lock and his thoughts turn to, 'No, please no, god no.' There's pressure in his chest and he can't take a deep breath. He can hear his pulse picking up speed in his ears and he knows he should be trying to slow it down, but that's a bit hard to do when he can't even breathe.

A hand wraps around his forearm and Natasha's voice is firm in his ear. "Bruce, you need to calm down."

He wants to shove her hand away because it's not helping the sensation of claustrophobia that's overriding his senses, but he raises his hands to his own face instead, trying to ground himself. The abrupt thought that they'll never let him back up here after this lodges a sob in his throat.

"Nat, give him some room; he's having a panic attack," Clint's voice says, and then, "Wait, wait, wait; what are you doing?"

Something stabs Bruce's right shoulder through the light material of his shirt.

Everything cuts to black.


	5. Chapter 5

I do not own any aspect of The Avengers, or any of Marvel's other creations.

-M.

* * *

His throat is dry. That's the first thing Bruce notices. Things two and three are the way his mouth feels like someone stuffed it full of cotton balls and that his tongue seems to have tripled in size.

He's also soaking wet.

It takes him a minute to open his eyes, and at first he thinks it's Noname Protagonist sitting cross-legged on the floor beside him. But the form is wrong, and one glance down at the bow in the man's hands brings the events on the roof back to him.

"Welcome back," Clint says. "How are you feeling?"

Bruce tries to say something positive, but there's not enough room left in his mouth for words.

"Sorry, dry mouth is one side effect of Natasha deciding to dose you on her own instead of waiting to see if your pulse got too high. Hang on a second."

Clint climbs to his feet and heads for the kitchen, and that's when Bruce realizes he's lying on the couch in his apartment. He feels a vague sensation of discontent, but his brain isn't awake enough to form any strong opinions yet.

"Here," Clint says, angling a glass of water to his lips. "Drink slowly or you'll choke."

Bruce takes a few sips, glancing around the room.

Clint seems to pick up on his curiosity. "Coulson went back to work and I told Tasha I'd text her if you wanted to see her. No one likes waking up to the sight of the person who drugged them."

"I'm sorry," Bruce manages to rasp.

"You should be," Clint says. "It's pretty pathetic to have an anxiety attack at the thought of being locked back in solitary, especially after people dangled freedom in front of you."

Bruce licks his lips and Clint's mouth quirks into a smile. "Maybe dry wit isn't your thing."

There's something digging into Bruce's neck, and he realizes that the collar's still in place. It takes a frustrating amount of concentration to maneuver his fingers through the gestures needed to release the clasp and drop the collar onto the carpet beside Clint's knee.

It's only after the collar hits the ground that Bruce wonders if they left it in place for a reason.

"Is it okay if I tell Nat she can come back?" Clint asks. "She was worried about you, which more or less makes you the most impressive person in the building."

Bruce nods and realizes that his mouth is open and he's probably drooling onto the arm of the sofa. He tries to be subtle about wiping it away as Clint punches something into his phone.

It's only a couple of minutes before there's a knock at the door and Natasha lets herself in.

"Coulson wants to know why you aren't answering your phone," she says to Clint before turning to Bruce. "How are you feeling?"

"Good," Bruce lies at the same time Clint says. "That's because I'm ignoring him."

Natasha raises an eyebrow at Clint. "You have a mission."

"I know," he says. "I already read the briefing and it's not like I have any packing to do. I was just waiting for you to get here before I headed out."

Clint rises and brushes his fingers over the back of Natasha's hand.

"Try not to get yourself killed," she commands.

Clint smirks. "Yes, ma'am. See you guys in a couple weeks."

"Bye," Bruce whispers to the closing door.

Natasha looks him over. Her expression curves into a frown as Bruce fights to get his limbs coordinated enough to sit up.

He realizes, as he rights himself, that someone put a blanket over him while he was unconscious. He's still in the clothes he was wearing on the roof, though, and both the blanket and the couch are moist from the rain still clinging to him.

For one delirious moment Bruce considers sealing his clothes in plastic bags and tacking them to his walls like some kind of trophy; 'Here's my collection of real rainwater. I gathered it myself.'

He laughs to himself at the thought and hopes that Natasha will assume it's a side effect of whatever she injected into him.

His mind rolls back to the scene on the roof.

"I'm so sorry about what happened up there," he says; laughter draining away as he fumbles for an excuse. "I haven't eaten any protein for a few days and I think I might just have been light headed. It won't happen again."

Natasha doesn't say anything, but there's sympathy in the set of her eyes. Bruce could punch himself. Of course it won't happen again. He's given them more than enough reason to keep him locked in his apartment until they cart his body away to be buried.

"Go change into something that isn't soaked and we'll work more on your Russian," Natasha says.

Bruce nods and focuses on maintaining command over his muscle groups. She's still here, he tells himself. Maybe he won't ever be allowed outside again, but Clint cared enough to put off leaving on his assignment until Bruce was conscious, and Natasha came back after watching him lose it and she still seems willing to waste her downtime on him.

He's not alone for now, and maybe that's not everything he's hoped for in his life, but it's a hell of a lot more than what he had two weeks ago.

Bruce could write a dissertation on making the most out of bad situations, so he decides, as he closes his bedroom door with one hand and starts undoing the buttons on his shirt with the other, that not alone for now is livable. That he can survive without the sun and sky and be okay with it as long as he still gets to talk to another human being sometimes.

He peels off his clinging clothes to the rhythm in his head of 'Good enough, good enough, good enough.'

* * *

Natasha gets a new assignment the next day.

She arrives on his doorstep in stilettos and a frown. She's zipped into a black dress that blurs the line between tasteful and provocative, and Bruce gets the impression that the person wearing Natasha's face could cry over spilt wine one minute and snap someone's neck the next.

"You'd better be halfway to fluent by the time I get back," she says as he looks her over, and Bruce wonders if that's her way of telling him she'll be gone for a while.

"Thank you for everything," he says. "Really."

She puts her hand on his shoulder and Bruce's muscles lock up. He wonders if a handful of interactions count as friendship, or if she's viewed it more as trying to train an animal at the zoo.

Natasha steps away and Bruce closes his front quickly because he knows she won't be able to leave the hallway while he's still staring after her. Manners. Don't want to make her wait.

He goes into the kitchen and makes himself a cup of tea. He holds it in his hands for a moment before pouring it down the sink.

He's alone for the rest of the day.

* * *

Maria Hill visits him at 7:32pm the next evening, after he's convinced himself that Coulson's decided he doesn't need any more visitors. Bruce clenches his jaw and blinks rapidly to keep control of the emotions that try to override his body at the sight of her.

She leans against the wall again and begins a line of questioning about his time in India. Bruce picks at a hangnail on his right thumb and tries to answer her in as much detail as possible.

Hill comes back the next evening to ask him about Brazil, and then the last time he was in Willowdale the evening after.

It's four days straight of her before Bruce works up the courage to ask if Coulson's gone somewhere.

She tells him that's classified and that ends their conversation for the night.

At noon the next day she's replaced by a man with red hair curling out from under a bowler hat. "Call me Dum Dum," he says, hand extended.

Bruce takes it and wonders if that's what everyone calls him or if he just doesn't feel comfortable giving out his real name.

Dum Dum drops into Natasha's seat on the couch, asks, "What do you know about Captain America?" and spends the next two hours and forty-five minutes recounting the life of Steve Rogers in exacting detail.

Bruce, who did quite a bit of research on Rogers when he was working at Culver, listens with a polite smile and a wandering mind right up until the part where Dum Dum begins to describe the good Captain's time travel to the twenty-first century by way of icecap.

There are grainy cell phone pictures circling the less reputable parts of the internet of a man who looks a bit like Rogers being surrounded by SHIELD-type officers in Times Square, but this is the first confirmation Bruce has heard of Captain America's continued good health.

That means there are two men with superhero alter-egos running around America. Bruce wonders if Captain America and Iron Man will team up to save the day at some point, comic book crossover-style. Times are good for children who need role models, provided they stay naive to the sorts of activities Tony Stark enjoys.

"He's a good man, Steve Rogers," Dum Dum says in a tone that sounds like he's hit the recapping portion of his speech. "Almost everyone he's ever known or loved is in the ground and he doesn't miss a beat; just wants to know what he can do to help. That's practically the definition of a hero."

Bruce spends the rest of the day thinking of how many different ways a person can be lonely. That night he dreams in black and white about soldiers with eerie smiles and deadened eyes.

* * *

No one comes to visit him the next day, and no one comes the day after that. No one, no one, no one for eight days captured in tally marks on the wall filled with his equations.

It's not so bad, Bruce tells himself at first; classic rock drooling from the loose fit between his earbuds and his auditory canals, the volume on his iPod turned up almost high enough to drown out the fears in his mind. After forty-eight hours alone Ender, Winston, and Noname join him for tea. Four days in and he has a panic attack that lasts over an hour and leaves him sobbing in the bathtub. On day six Bruce writes, 'Please,' on the whiteboard. 'Please, I'm sorry for whatever I've done. Please send someone.' He rewrites it four times; worried they won't be able to read the font produced by his shaking hand.

He doesn't remember which day he stopped eating again.

After seven days Bruce wakes up in the fort he doesn't remember rebuilding and swears to himself that if no one comes for him by day fourteen that he'll abbreviate his time in this hell with a kitchen knife and a few well-placed cuts.

The day after he spends dry heaving. He stays awake right through to magic day nine.

He doesn't know it's magic at first. All he knows is he's tried compromising with SHIELD, adding 'or a fifth of Jack Daniels' under his previous request on the whiteboard. As unlikely as it is that they'll deliver, he can't seem to keep his eyes closed long enough to know for sure.

Bruce babbles in Russian while he wills himself to nap and wonders if anyone will tell Natasha that he practiced just like she told him to.

His first reaction to the pounding on his door is anger, because he's never going to get to sleep with that kind of noise.

His second is an overwhelming calm.

Bruce feels like he's watching himself on a screen as some force other than his mind propels his body to the door.

The man on the other side glares better with his one eye than anyone Bruce has ever seen with two. He looks like he's half a breath away from murder and Bruce is proud of the smile that whoever's in charge of his body plasters across his face. Half a breath and he'll be spared five days of waiting and the discipline of doing it himself.

"My name is Director Nick Fury," the man says like he's giving an order. "And I'm here to offer you your freedom."

"You should probably come in, then," Bruce hears himself say.

He's knit back into his own skin somewhere between the front door and the kitchen table. Bruce angles it so the Director's back is to the living room and his view of the conversation isn't against the backdrop of Bruce's fort.

Fury is carrying a tablet and he sets it down on the table and slides it over to Bruce as he sits. The image of a glowing blue cube fills the screen.

"This is the Tesseract," Fury explains. "It's a supercharged hunk of rock from outer space that was stolen from SHIELD six hours ago by the Norse demigod Loki. If you can find it for us we'll give you a backpack full of money, drop you in any third world country you want, and SHIELD will leave you alone as long as you can keep yourself under control."

Bruce stares down at photo of the cube and tries to process. "How do you expect me to find it?"

"It gives off gamma rays, and I know you know those better than anybody. We've got a lab all set up and waiting for you. I won't even make you wear the collar."

"So if I go and I find it for you I'm just supposed to trust that you won't drag me back here?" Bruce asks.

"I give you my word," Fury says.

A laugh claws its way up Bruce's throat. "Your word, sure. The same word that probably approved my incarceration in the first place. If you expect me to trust you you're going to have to do better than that. I want Coulson's word. I want Natasha's word."

"Coulson's working another assignment, but if you'll follow me to the helicopter that's waiting on the roof, Agent Romanoff can give you her word in person."

Bruce nods slowly. "Let me go change."

"Hurry," Fury tells his retreating back. "We're running out of time."

Six minutes later Bruce is following Fury out onto the roof he thought he'd never see again. There's no time to enjoy the half-clouded sunlight as Fury leads the way into the helicopter.

"Romanoff," Fury's voice thunders in the confined space as Bruce climbs in behind him. "Tell Banner I'm a man of my word."

"If this is about you getting your freedom back after all this is over, I'll oversee your relocation myself," Natasha says. There's an edge to her voice, and she only gives Bruce a passing glance as he straps into the empty seat beside her.

Bruce nods and waits until the blades of the helicopter are a harsh white noise before asking her softly if everything's alright.

She meets his gaze for the first time since she left on her assignment, and Bruce can see anger cold and sharp in her eyes. "Barton's been taken prisoner," she says.

Bruce tries to think, but he's pretty sure he's never heard that name before. "Who?"

"Clint," she clarifies.

He blinks and he can see it; the man who kept vigil over his unconscious form now restrained and bloody, fighting to keep quiet against a battery of questions. "I'm sorry."

Natasha nods and turns to look out the window on her other side.

They don't talk again for the rest of the trip.

* * *

**A/N**: Thank you all so much for the attention you've been giving this story; I love getting emails whenever people add it to their alerts or favorites, and I really appreciate the time you've spent writing reviews. I'm having a lot of fun working on this, and it's wonderful to know that it's being enjoyed. -M


	6. Chapter 6

I do not own any aspect of The Avengers, or any of Marvel's other creations.

-M.

* * *

"Okay, okay, you're probably dead on your feet by now, but I just have one more room to show you and then I swear you won't see me again for twelve hours, minimum," Tony says, his grin verging on maniacal.

"Sure." Bruce follows Tony into yet another elevator where the up button is pressed yet again. Bruce is going to have to upload a blueprint of Stark Tower to the tablet Tony gave him; there's no other possible way he's going to get anywhere around here.

The elevator dings and they walk out into what was probably the penthouse twenty-four hours ago and is now more like ground zero. The windows have been almost completely smashed out and there's rubble everywhere. Bruce wonders if anything will be salvageable.

"Look," Tony says, pointing to two craters in the floor at the middle of the room. One of them is an amorphous dent, but the other has the clear imprint of a body in the middle of it. "Do you remember this?"

Bruce doesn't, but he's pretty sure he can see where this is going. Destruction is the Other Guy's signature.

"This is what you did to Loki. He managed to brainwash Hawkeye and almost beat Captain Wonder Bread into a pulp the first time they fought, but you smashed him into the floor like it was nothing." Tony's voice is almost reverent, and Bruce thinks it's no wonder; the public persona of Tony Stark only pays homage to two gods: power and science.

"This is what all that strength you're so terrified of can do," Tony adds. "You should be fucking proud of it."

"Maybe I'll appreciate it more once I've had some sleep," Bruce offers.

Tony's grinning again. "Sure. You'll have time to warm up to them; I'm having my architect stop by tomorrow to talk about fixing this place up and making the rest of the tower into Superhero Paradise, but I'm going to have her keep the craters; they're my new favorite part of the building."

"I'm glad you like them," Bruce says. He smiles. Tony's being nice. Much more than nice if Bruce thinks about it; he's giving him a place to stay and a lab to work in. Even better, he's giving Bruce the promise that he's not alone. The only downside is that Tony doesn't understand. It was bad enough when the Other Guy was a monster. Now the 'Hulk' seems to be getting just as much praise as the rest of the Avengers, and people are eagerly awaiting his next appearance.

"Okay, that was it," Tony says. "We stopped the bad guy and saved the world. Now's the part where the credits roll and we get some well deserved rest. Pepper's supposed to get here in an hour and a half. You're welcome to stay up if you want to meet her, but she'll probably come off better when she's not all 'Aah, the world almost ended and you almost died and what the hell were you thinking, Tony?' I'm not even planning to wait up for her. That kind of conversation usually goes better when I'm half asleep."

"I'll wait until the morning," Bruce says. "Can you tell me how to get back to my room?"

"JARVIS!" Tony shouts, glancing up at the ceiling. "Walk Dr. Banner back to his room for me."

"Yes, sir," the AI responds. "Dr. Banner, if you'd be so kind as to return to the elevator, I can guide you back to your suite."

"Thanks for everything," Bruce says to Tony. It's not nearly enough to cover what the billionaire has done, but it's a start.

Tony waves the compliment away. "Hey, it's nothing. You're really doing me a favor here; I've got all of these extra rooms and nothing to do with them."

"I do appreciate it, though," Bruce tries again. "Really."

"Get some sleep," Tony counters. "I want to see what that brain of yours can do when it's not hobbled by SHIELD's antique excuses for technology."

"Sure," Bruce says, before heading into the elevator.

Tony is still staring at the holes in the floor when the doors close.

With JARVIS' help Bruce has no trouble finding his way through the maze of floors and hallways between the penthouse and his room.

'Room' is laughable. He's got a two-story suite that looks like it's been transplanted from a five-star hotel in Dubai. The bedroom alone is big enough to house his entire SHIELD apartment with space left over. Bruce opens every curtain and, when the sight of the city isn't enough, he cracks the windows so that he can smell the night air and hear the faint sounds that manage to reach this far into the sky. He feels a bit bad about making Tony pay more to keep his corner of the building heated, but he has the feeling the billionaire doesn't spend much time looking at his bills.

Bruce sits down on the edge of the king size bed and runs his fingers over the duvet. He's fallen through a wormhole. He's living in a fever dream and it's only a matter of time before he wakes up in his blanket fort with Ender and Winston and Noname standing guard over him.

He tries to process.

The sensation of being able to move around freely was the strangest part at first. He'd spent most of his time on the Helicarrier in hiding; camped out in the lab he'd been given because the thought of being free to roam around a contained facility housing so many damn people was overwhelming, and he didn't want to give SHIELD any kind of technicality on which to withdraw their offer of freedom once the Tesseract had been found. That, and the fact that trying to pretend that he hadn't spent the last ten days wobbling on the edge of a complete mental breakdown was exhausting.

After Tony's perpetual attempts to bring the Hulk out became a bit tedious, Bruce had decided to try taking a walk around the Helicarrier, as much to get away from Tony's eager gaze as to prove to himself that he could do it. He passed dozens of people in the span of ten minutes and only a fraction even acknowledged his presence. It felt like his time out of the country. Even better, it felt like his time before the accident, when no one looked at him like he was anything out of the ordinary because he wasn't.

And then they'd brought Loki onboard and everything had gone to hell.

He remembers the transformation. Natasha's voice coming from way too close as she swore that she would help him, that she would get him out. His memory cuts off after that.

"JARVIS?" He says to the silence around him.

"Yes, Dr. Banner?"

"Do you still have access to the CCTV on the Helicarrier?"

"I'm afraid SHIELD has locked me out of their live feed, but I do have recordings from the time Mr. Stark entered their system up until seven hours ago."

The golden answer. "Is there a way you can pull up the videos of the Hulk's time on the plane?"

"Of course, sir. Would you like those transmitted to your computer, or should I play them on the bedroom tv?"

"The tv would be good, thanks."

It's not a tv so much as a blank stretch of wall to the right of the bathroom door that glows gray for an instant before splitting into four different camera angles, each giving a unique perspective on the Hulk's rampage through the Helicarrier.

He watches it straight through five times and then begins enlarging the different angles at different times to see exactly what the Hulk did and what the aftermath was. The beginning is the worst part, he decides. The fear naked in Natasha's eyes as she runs from the Hulk knots his stomach.

This is the creature that helped save the world. This is the hero Tony keeps bragging about. Whatever good people might think is in the Hulk, it's not anywhere near enough to nullify the rage and the need to devastate.

"JARVIS, shut it off, please."

The room seems dim without the glow of the screen. Bruce gives his eyes a second to adjust before retrieving the duffel Natasha had given him from where he'd dropped it earlier.

He doesn't know what she filled it with; he didn't bring anything onto the Helicarrier except the clothes he had been wearing.

Bruce unzips the bag to find a sleek black smart phone sitting on top of a collection of clothes and toiletries taken from his apartment at SHIELD. They carry with them the faint smell of something Bruce can't classify as anything other than the scent of _that_ place, and while it was probably meant as a kind gesture, he's really not sure he needs any more reminders of his time there.

He pulls out the phone and zips the bag closed again. Brushing his fingers across the glass pulls up a locked screen with the words 'Call me when you can. –Nat' glowing across the background. He follows the 'Slide to unlock' instruction and pulls up the address book to find that it has numbers saved for all of the other Avengers, excluding Thor.

His thumb hovers over the green phone icon to the right of Natasha's name, and Bruce wonders if he should wait until the morning to call her. Then again, if she went to the trouble changing the background of the lock screen just to ask him to contact her, she probably didn't want him to put it off.

He touches the screen and lifts the phone to his ear.

Two rings, before there's a connection. "This is Barton," says the voice on the other end of the phone.

"Hi," Bruce says. "Sorry, I was trying to call Natasha."

"You did; this is her phone."

"Oh." Bruce finds himself hovering somewhere between mortifyingly embarrassed and relieved that no one's around to watch him blush as his mind fills in the blanks of what Clint could be doing answering Natasha's phone. "I'm sorry. I got a message from Natasha asking me to call."

"Well, she's in the shower right now, but she's been in there for a while. Give me a sec."

Something muffles the speaker before Clint shouts an incoherent string of words away from the phone. His voice is back after a beat of silence. "She says she'll be out in a few minutes. You can just stay on the line if you want."

"Sure," Bruce says. There's really no other polite answer he can give.

Clint doesn't respond, and Bruce wonders if that means he's supposed to say something, or if Clint would prefer not to talk.

"I heard about your capture," Bruce says when the silence becomes too awkward for him to bear. "Are you okay?"

Clint chokes a laugh. "Wonderful. Fan-fucking-tastic."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean…" Bruce's voice trails off when he realizes he doesn't know how to end that sentence.

There's a pause before Clint's voice echoes in Bruce's ear again. "No, that was rude of me; I know you're just trying to be nice. I'm guessing they probably didn't tell you that it wasn't a 'capture' so much as mind control. I was taking commands straight from the God of Lies himself for a while there. You know the attack on the Helicarrier? I was the one who made that happen."

Bruce closes his eyes. "Do you remember any of it?"

"Every damn minute."

'I'm so sorry,' Bruce's mind tells him to say. Or maybe, 'I can't imagine.' Instead he whispers, "It doesn't work like that for me when I transform into the Hulk. Sometimes I get images, sort of like a dream, but that's it. I'm sorry; I know it's not the same at all, but I do understand what it feels like to have control taken away from you, and I know how it is to snap out of it and have to look back on everything you did when you were under."

Bruce hears Clint take two deep breaths before saying, "Here's Tasha."

"Are you okay?" Natasha's voice asks faintly before becoming clearer. "Hi, Bruce; how are you doing?"

"Well enough. Your message said you wanted me to call?"

"Yeah, do you have a few minutes?"

This is it. Natasha's going to explain in her diplomatic way that, after two transformations in a span of less than twenty-four hours, SHIELD has decided Bruce is too dangerous to be out in the world. Fury's agreement had hinged on Bruce's ability to control himself, and he's already proven he can't do that.

Bruce glances at the duffle by his side. He could try running, but he's broke in the middle of New York; he'd be lucky to get five blocks before they picked him up.

"Bruce?"

"Sorry, I'm still here."

"This is just a check in to see how you're doing," Natasha says. "You're basically a civilian, and after everything you've been through recently I wanted to make sure you were handling things alright."

Oh.

Kindness.

Bruce feels like a paranoid ass.

"I'm doing okay," he says. "Still trying to process. I watched the feed from my transformation on the Helicarrier. I'm so sorry for what happened."

"It's fine. You're still learning how to control it."

"I don't think control will ever be an option with him," Bruce tells her.

"Maybe not, but he was pretty helpful by the end."

"So I've heard; Tony has been singing his praises."

Natasha snorts. "I admire you for being willing to live under the same roof as him. Stark's antics get old pretty fast."

"It sounds like his hope is to get the rest of you to join us," Bruce says. "Make us into one big happy family."

"Clint and I are under contract with SHIELD, and I'm not sure they'd go for that."

"Maybe not."

There's a pause, and then Natasha sighs. "Bruce, I don't know if anyone told you about Coulson."

Bruce's heart drops into his stomach. "What about Coulson?"

"Loki got out of his cage on the Helicarrier and Coulson tried stop him by himself. He didn't make it."

It's ridiculous. Bruce spent a few hours with Coulson total, and most of those were void of communication. He knows nothing about the agent whatsoever. But Coulson was his first human contact after eight months of silence, and he was the one who'd drop onto Bruce's couch and watch tv like there was nothing unusual about either of them. He was a good agent, obviously, but from what Bruce could tell he was also a good man.

"Will there be a funeral?" Bruce asks, before wondering if it would be better for himself in the long run if he were to go ahead and bite his tongue off now.

"They'll probably do some sort of service for SHIELD. I'm sure you and the rest of the team will be welcome to attend if you want."

"Okay." It takes him longer than it should for him to ask, "Are you alright? You knew him much better than I did. How are you and Clint handling it?"

"We'll be okay," Natasha says. "We always are."

"It's good that you have each other," Bruce notes.

"Yeah, I'm lucky; he's a good friend."

"That's good." Bruce says, and wonders what her definition of a 'good friend' is.

Bruce hears Clint mutter something in the background before Natasha says, "If you're sure you're stable I'm going to go. Fury wants me to stop by the tower in the next few days to set up some ground rules for Stark's interactions with the press. We can talk more then."

"Sure. Thanks for checking up on me."

"You're welcome. Enjoy your freedom."

"I will," Bruce says, before dropping the phone onto the nightstand. He strips down to his boxers and considers taking a shower, before the exhaustion in his mind assures him that if he tries to stay awake for much longer he'll be functioning with the backdrop of auditory hallucinations.

He pulls back the covers and slips inside, shuffling to the center of the mattress and stretching his limbs out in all directions to feel the expanse of the bed and the expense of the sheets.

The events of the past few days batter against the walls of his mind, but for now he's got freedom, a place to stay, and the ability to interact with people whenever he wants.

He falls asleep and doesn't dream.


	7. Chapter 7

I do not own any aspect of The Avengers, or any of Marvel's other creations.

-M.

* * *

Bruce has no idea how Tony does it. The day Thor took Loki back to Asgard, Tony mentioned how convenient it would be to have the Avengers living in one place, and within a week he'd managed to collect all of them except the God of Thunder.

"The remodel's not done yet, sorry about that," Tony explains as he gives Clint and Natasha their first grand tour, Steve his second, and Bruce his third. "But it's still bound to be better than whatever Spartan barracks SHIELD stuffs you into."

Clint and Natasha haven't left each other's personal space since they arrived at the tower. Natasha speaks for both of them; asking questions about the logistics of living as a team and answering anything the others throw at them. Clint glares at everything, nods occasionally when Natasha glances at him, and makes Bruce wonder if he even knows where he is.

"Okay, I have to ask," Tony says as he leads the way to the wing that holds the unclaimed suites. "And I'll remind you that there are witnesses here in case you feel like stabbing me or something, but one bedroom or two?"

Natasha says, "Two," without glancing at Clint.

"Yeah, okay; it is always nice to have your own space." There's a smirk on Tony's lips that doesn't quite match his words.

The tour ends in front of their rooms with an explanation that there will be Thai food available in the main kitchen in twenty minutes, and JARVIS is always available to help with anything they might need.

"Thanks," Natasha says, before stepping into her room. Clint follows her inside.

Tony turns to Steve and Bruce and his smirk becomes lecherous. "Call it. I've got fifty dollars that says they're friends with benefits."

Steve's eyebrows drop and his mouth turns down in confusion.

"Fuck buddies," Tony tries to clarify. "I don't know what they called it in the forties, but my dad was around so the concept must have been there."

"Leave them alone," Steve commands, shaking his head. "They've been through hell." He walks down the hall without looking back.

Tony stares after him, frowning, before he plasters a grin back on his features and turns to Bruce. "How about you? You seem like you've gotten on Agent Romanoff's good side; any insider info you'd like to share?"

"Steve's right," Bruce says. "It's none of our business."

"Ugh, this was a fantastic opportunity to grow closer as a team through suspicion and surveillance and you guys are ruining it. I should report you to Fury."

Tony is trying to be funny, but the mention of Fury in the conversation makes Bruce flinch. "Sorry," he mumbles.

Tony rolls his eyes toward the ceiling. "I'll just have to think of something else to keep us entertained. In the meantime, you should stop by my lab; I'm hoping to come up with some way to contact Thor, and I could use your input."

"Sure," Bruce says. "Would this afternoon work?"

"Definitely; lunch first is important. I kind of have a habit of getting caught up in my work and there's nothing quite as depressing as reheated curry."

They part ways; Bruce heading back to his room to keep himself from standing outside Natasha's door wondering if it would be rude to knock and Tony slouching off to do something that probably isn't that.

Clint and Natasha are no-shows at lunch.

Bruce tries to be subtle about picking the meat out of his food as he waits until Steve and Tony have eaten their share and left the kitchen before he loads up two plates and heads toward the bedrooms.

He's not trying to intrude, and if he's interrupting anything he can just leave the plates and go, but Bruce has missed interacting with people who know what the past nine months have entailed for him. Tony talks about Loki's visit to earth like it was some kind of superhero play date, and Steve calls Bruce 'Doctor' and doesn't have much to say to him beyond that. Bruce has to believe that Clint and Natasha will handle everything that happened more honestly than that.

There's no response to his first rap on Natasha's door, holding one plate of food in his right hand and balancing the other on his forearm to free him up to knock. He tries once more, and is about to leave when the door opens and Natasha peers out at him.

"Hi," Bruce says. "I have some lunch for you two if you want it. You brought me pizza when I was at SHIELD, so I thought I could sort of return the favor."

Natasha rests her temple against the doorframe and gives him an exasperated smile. "How has the world not ruined you yet, Banner?"

Bruce has no idea what she means by that. Before he can ask she takes a step back and gestures him into her living room.

"Bruce brought food," she calls through the suite.

Clint shuffles in from another room barefooted and shirtless. Bruce drops his gaze to the plates of food in his hands and prays that neither of the agents notice the heat rising in his cheeks. Clint is probably sick of being cockblocked by him.

"I didn't bring anything to drink because I didn't know what you'd want and there wasn't really a way for me to carry it," Bruce tells them. "If you give me your orders I can go get them and then leave you alone."

"I can grab the drinks," Natasha says, taking the plates from him. She hands one to Clint and sets the other down on the leather ottoman that doubles as a coffee table. "You're welcome to stay if you want."

"I'll take anything with alcohol in it," Clint says to Natasha as he sits down on the sofa and moves her food out of the way so he can put his feet up on the ottoman.

"You're not getting drunk," Natasha tells him before looking back at Bruce. "Do you want anything?"

Bruce shakes his head and Natasha leaves, closing the door behind her.

"Sorry for interrupting," Bruce says immediately, keep his eyes fixed on the arch of the sofa behind Clint's left shoulder. "I can go."

Clint takes a bite of pad thai before responding. "I think you apologize more than anyone I've ever met."

The heat in Bruce's cheeks intensifies. "I have a lot to apologize for."

"Maybe we should compare histories sometime. I'm pretty sure I could beat whatever score you're racked up against yourself."

"You work for SHIELD, though," Bruce says. "Whatever else you've done in your life, that's got to make things at least even again."

Clint's gaze feels like a tangible weight on Bruce's chest, and he's fighting hard not to cower under it.

Clint tilts his head to the side as he chews. "If you could take back one thing that you've done in your life, what would it be?"

Bruce's answer is immediate. "Exposing myself to gamma radiation."

"It has to be something besides that."

Bruce pulls up the mental catalogue of his offenses and begins flipping through. "Do you remember the monster that ransacked Harlem a few years back? The one that wasn't the Hulk?" He waits for Clint's nod before continuing. "I was the one who gave his creator everything he needed to make that happen. I was foolish and desperate enough to think he might be able to reverse what had happened to me, and instead he created a monster that killed hundreds of people and is now either dead or a prisoner of the US military." Bruce runs a hand through his hair, the sensation anchoring him in the present. "I'd take back ever contacting the man in the first place."

Clint lets out a low whistle. "Yeah, that's a good one."

"What about you?" Bruce asks.

There's a pause as Clint separates the different types of food on his plate into distinct piles. "I fell out of touch with my brother back when I was younger. I think, if I could take one thing back, it would be letting that relationship go."

Bruce nods, and Clint's voice stumbles over his next words in a rush to get them out. "I know it's not as good as taking back a massacre, and I damn well have some of those to account for, but I think, if he'd still been in my life, I would have been a better person for it. I think that might have changed some things."

"It's a good one," Bruce says. He's not good at assurances, but he made the mistake of looking at Clint's face, and all of the pronounced stoicism from his earlier tour of Stark Tower is gone, replaced by eyes held wide by sorrow and regret. There's something overwhelmingly fragile about him buried beneath the SHIELD training and the fighter's physique. Bruce knows nothing about archery or assassin work or whatever the hell else Clint's doing with his life, but he's intimately familiar with the sensation of waking up drowning beneath the weight of your past.

Tentatively, beating back the voice in his head that's commanding him to turn around and get out while he still seems to be on good terms with Clint, Bruce moves to the couch and sits down on the far end.

Clint stuffs a forkful of food in his mouth and glances over at Bruce, chewing noisily.

Bruce is still trying to think of something else to say when Natasha slips back into the room, two bottles of Coke in hand.

"Did you get lost?" Clint asks her.

She throws one of the bottles at his head and Clint catches it with reflexes so fast they make Bruce jump.

"Why anyone would need a building this large is beyond me," Natasha says, picking up her food and kicking off her shoes before curling up on the loveseat.

"Anything smaller and there wouldn't be room for his ego," Clint notes, his mouth full of noodles.

Natasha snorts. "How are you adjusting?" she asks Bruce before taking a bite.

"Good," Bruce says, before adding a bit more honestly, "Sometimes I wake up and it takes me a minute to remember where I am. It's a lot to relearn."

"Any unusual behaviors or trouble acclimating?"

Bruce's first instinct is to say no, but there's a hollow in his chest that aches constantly these days under the pressure of the emotions that won't let him go. "I dream about it sometimes. Or a lot, I guess. I also walk around the building in the middle of the night just to prove to myself that I can. I've probably been up to the roof fifty times by now, but I haven't left the building yet; I'm scared of how I'll react back in normal society."

Natasha nods. "That all sounds pretty typical."

"It'll get better over time," Clint agrees, reaching across the sofa to brush his fingertips over Bruce's shoulder before turning back to his food.

"Thanks," Bruce says, and he's pretty sure he means it more for the touch than anything else. He wants to say more, but his thoughts are cut off by JARVIS.

"Sorry for the intrusion," the AI offers, "But Mr. Stark is requesting the presence of Dr. Banner in the lab at his earliest convenience."

"Tony wants to figure out a way to communicate with Thor," Bruce explains as he stands.

"Not a bad idea," Natasha notes as Clint says, "Have fun. Thanks for the food."

Bruce responds with a 'thanks' of his own and shows himself out.

* * *

Bruce and Tony are together in the lab when JARVIS announces that a man who calls himself Doctor Doom is attacking the city with robots. Bruce glances at the clock in the corner of the screen in front of him and reads '3:27am' as Tony lets out a whoop and says, "Finally! I was wondering how long it would take for someone to be stupid enough to try to cross us. JARVIS, round everybody up; tell them we're on."

Bruce watches Tony activate his suit and then follows his eager steps to find the rest of the team. They meet up in the lobby where Steve, who still can't work a Blu-ray player, is holding an iPad with a briefing from SHIELD and explaining the attack plan. He's wearing his stars and stripes, and Clint and Natasha have arrived in their uniforms. Bruce is dressed in slacks and a button up shirt. He feels a bit like a kid on Take Your Child to Work Day.

Steve's eyes rise to meet his. "Are you ready?" the soldier asks.

Bruce Banner is a socially inept scientist who still has trouble sleeping through the night and has no place in this briefing. His only value comes from his ability to be replaced by a monster.

He nods and listens studiously as Steve gives them their marching orders. Then he follows the others outside and lets the anger overtake him.


	8. Chapter 8

Welcome to the chapter I wrote while drunk and am actually pretty proud of! Thanks so much, as always, for the reviews and time you've invested in reading this story.

I do not own any aspect of The Avengers, or any of Marvel's other creations.

-M.

* * *

Coming back to himself always makes Bruce feel as if he's been stuffed into a cupboard. There's not enough room inside his skinny limbs, and his brain is full of static. His joints are stiff and his muscles ache with the aftereffects of his transformation.

It takes him a few minutes to realize he's in bed, and several more to pick up on the fact that Natasha is sitting in a chair beside him, illuminated by the mid-afternoon sunlight that's managing to sneak between the city's western skyscrapers.

"Welcome back," she says.

Bruce opens his mouth and lets out a disjointed string of vowels and consonants. Then he concentrates and tries again. "How was it?"

"We won. Fury's a bit upset about the amount of damage that happened, especially since they're still cleaning up after the fight with the Chitauri, but he'll calm down."

"Did the Hulk hurt anyone?"

"No, you did well," Natasha says with a smile. It broadens after a moment. "Well, you fractured Clint's wrist, but that was his own fault for trying to teach the Hulk how to do a fist bump while we waited for you to change back."

Bruce squeezes his eyes shut and tries to feel remorse, but the closest he can come to it is confusion. He can't picture Clint even attempting to interact with the Hulk, much less trying to teach him tricks. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be; Clint got him to figure out how to do it eventually. I think Tony filmed it."

Bruce waits until Natasha leaves before asking JARVIS if he can pull up the video. The screen on his wall lights up almost immediately.

The camera shakes as Tony's laughter fills the air, but it picks up the image of the Hulk sitting in the middle of a street where dismembered robots seem to have fallen like confetti. His huge green face is pinched in concentration as he stares down at Clint who's already cradling his right arm close to his chest.

"Okay, let's try it again, big guy," Clint says, holding his good fist in the air. "Remember, you have to be gentle or it's going to be a few weeks before we can try this again."

The Hulk makes his own fist and moves it with exaggerated slowness toward Clint's. They bump, and the Hulk pulls his back like he's been shocked.

"You did it!" Clint shouts, his face splitting into a grin. He lurches forward and, with a move that makes Bruce hold his breath, punches the Hulk playfully on the shoulder.

A growl rumbles low in the Hulk's chest, and Bruce stares at the screen, waiting for the monster to reach forward and tear Clint to pieces. But then the creature's eyes crinkle and Bruce realizes that he's laughing.

Clint laughs with him, loud and victorious, and he looks nothing like the haunted man who's been dogging Natasha's footsteps.

The Hulk's laughter begins to grow higher as his body shrinks, before cutting off as he collapses into Bruce's unconscious form.

"Nice work, team," Steve's voice says from somewhere out of shot. "Stark, grab Banner and let's get out of here."

The camera starts to move closer to Bruce before the clip cuts off.

Bruce tips his chin up and stares at the ceiling until the texture dances for him. Then he asks, "Jarvis, can you tell me where Clint is?"

* * *

Jarvis leads him down to the shooting range several floors underground. The room is constructed much like a bunker; thick cement walls and no decoration. Tony designed the targets so they can remain stationary or be set to move in abrupt, unpredictable patterns, depending on the preferences of the shooter.

He walks into the observation room, behind six inches of bulletproof glass, to find Clint in the range. The archer has traded his bow for a Glock and set eight targets into free motion. He hits the dead center of each one without pause, a quick succession of one two three four five six seven eight, one two three four five six seven eight, drop the magazine, reload, and repeat. The hand he's using to replace the magazines is braced from palm to forearm, but it doesn't seem to cause much of a hindrance.

Clint is quick enough that it only takes a few minutes for the last magazine on his belt to be loaded into his clip, and a couple of seconds beyond that before it falls to join the mountain of others at his feet.

His arm drops, gun sliding into its holster, and though Bruce can't hear into the range, he guesses from the target that flies forward that Clint has asked JARVIS if he can examine it. Clint touches a spot about two inches off from the center of the target, and Bruce can only assume that it was, in Clint's mind, a miss. With a roll of his shoulders, Clint bends and begins picking up the empty magazines.

Bruce presses the button to activate the intercom between the two rooms. Faint clinks of metal on metal feed in from the range.

"Shouldn't your wrist be in a cast?" Bruce asks.

Clint stands, whirls, and pulls a pair of earplugs out of his ears in one fluid movement. There's sweat on his temples and a grin setting fire to his face. He looks so much more _alive_ when he's not grieving his own actions. His amusement is contagious; Bruce feels his lips quirking upward in response.

"It's harder to move around in a cast," Clint explains.

"I think that's supposed to be the point." Bruce holds his own wrist up in a quick demonstration. "If that doesn't heal right you're never going to get back your full range of motion."

"Did they teach you that during your time studying nuclear physics, Doctor?" Clint teases. He gathers up his magazines and carries them over to the table in the corner of the range, dropping them next to a few boxes of ammunition. Bruce doesn't know what it was that scared away the sorrow and regret the man's been carrying around with him since Loki crawled inside his head, but he's grateful; Clint looks infinitely better for it.

"I lived in Calcutta for two years. You learn a lot about fixing people up when you're hiding in a place where almost nobody can afford real medical attention."

Like the rest of his inadvertent demonstration, Clint refills the magazines with easy precision, as though Bruce is just witnessing the latest of the hundreds of times he has done it.

Bruce thinks hundreds might be aiming low.

"I had an assignment in Calcutta about six years back," Clint mentions. "I was there for a week and I almost died from heat stroke. Two years would have killed me."

"You get used to it," Bruce says.

Clint slides the last bullet into place and begins clipping the magazines back onto his belt. He favors his good hand as much as possible.

"I saw the video of you and the Hulk after the battle," Bruce tells him.

Clint's eyes rise to meet his, and despite the glass and distance, Bruce can read the excitement in them. "He was amazing, right? He totally got the concept right away, and it only took a few tries to work out the logistics."

"The 'logistics' being a way to do it without breaking your other wrist."

"Don't you dare try to apologize for that," Clint warns him. "When I was a kid my brother and I used to catch fireflies in the summer. It took me a while the first time around before I figured out how to trap them in my hands without crushing them. It's the same concept. He enjoyed learning; that's what matters."

Clint's smile has been recast into sharp lines of concern. Bruce doesn't know why the hell he feels the need to defend the monster, but apparently Clint's found something to latch onto and the last thing Bruce wants to do is offset his good mood and drive him back to where he was when he first arrived at the tower.

"Just be careful around him, okay?" His tone flirts with begging. "He doesn't process things the same way humans do; he only has one instinct and that's to devastate. Anything you try to teach him is going to go against that."

Clint tightens the straps on his brace. "Maybe he's only that way because that's all he's seen from everyone he's ever interacted with. Maybe the big guy just needs a friend."

"Please don't try to make this into a feel-good movie," Bruce says. "I don't want to be sitting at your funeral thinking 'I did this.'"

"If it comes to that you can be sitting there thinking, 'That stupid bastard; I told him this would happen.' I take full responsibility for my actions and any adverse effects they might have on my health."

"You can't," Bruce says, suddenly able to picture the scene all to clearly. He leans toward the glass and the desk that runs the length of the wall before him cuts into his thighs. "You can't let him kill you. You have to stop him if he tries something, because I won't be able to."

"Hey, hey," Clint says, and then his voice cuts off and Bruce isn't sure what's happened to it; he's too busy squeezing his eyes shut and trying to blot out the images in his mind—sepia images of a funeral layered between highly saturated snapshots of his rooms in SHIELD. Where else would they send an Avenger killer?

"Whoa, hey, okay," Clint's voce picks up again, louder this time and without the echoed quality the speakers add to it.

Hands grab Bruce's shoulders, pulling him away from the desk and twisting him around. Bruce thinks wildly that the contact can't possibly be good for Clint's wrist. Then the hands are gone, replaced by tight arms and the press of a body against his own. The air is filled with the smell of sweat and gun smoke. Bruce inhales it in quick, short bursts as his heart pounds in his chest, danger, danger, danger.

Bruce flails, trying to shove Clint away. "You have to go," he growls through clenched teeth. "I'm not safe."

"Sorry," Clint says, loosening his grip without backing away. "I'm not scared of him and I'm not scared of you."

There's enough give that Bruce could break away if he really wanted to, but the careful, rational side of him is quaking under the realization that he hasn't been hugged in three years, not since Betty, and that he needs this just as much as breathing, just as much as control.

He drops his arms, presses his face into Clint's shoulder, and tries to clear his mind.

Peace comes slowly, trickling in between the pound of his pulse and the howl of his emotions.

Clint holds him until Bruce raises his head and pulls back.

"You okay in there?" Clint asks gently.

Bruce nods. The rage is gone, leaving plenty of room for overwhelming embarrassment. "Sorry about that," he says, heat rushing to the tips of his ears.

"Tasha's watched me lose it completely on two different occasions," Clint tells him. "Having a minor freak out is nothing to apologize for. Especially after you got control of it."

The mention of Natasha sends a new wave of mortification through Bruce. Whatever she and Clint are to each other, it's pretty obvious they're together, and while she doesn't exactly come off as the controlling type—not in her authentic relationships, anyway; Tony would probably have something to say about the rest of her personality—Bruce is pretty sure he's crossed into the grey area of potentially too much physical contact. Granted, he's not female, so he's not the same kind of threat, but the issue remains.

"I should go; there's some stuff in the lab I need to check on." It's a ridiculous lie, but it's the first one he could think of to extract himself from the room. "Thank you for…" His voice trails off as he gestures vaguely, before giving up on specifics. "Thanks."

Clint snorts and waves him off. "Have fun with your science, Doctor."

Bruce is still smiling when he enters the lab seven minutes later.


	9. Chapter 9

I do not own any aspect of The Avengers, or any of Marvel's other creations.

-M.

* * *

Two days after the robot attack there's a thunderstorm that covers the entire state of New Mexico and lasts for an hour and a half. When it dissipates Tony calls Jane Foster and tells her to enjoy the reunion with her demigod boyfriend and then make sure he gets his ass to New York by the end of the week.

He doesn't expect the call three days later asking to arrange a ride from the airport.

Bruce is waiting with the others in the main living room of the tower. It's the first time he's seen Clint since the shooting range and he's made a point to sit as far away as possible from where the archer is perched on the armrest of Natasha's chair. Pepper's joined the group, and Bruce is asking her every question he can think of about running Stark Industries and managing Tony at the same time so he doesn't have to sit in silence and try to figure out what to do with his eyes and hands.

Clint keeps looking at him. Bruce doesn't know why.

The elevator dings and opens to reveal Tony followed by the much larger form of Thor. The god is holding a small suitcase in one hand and has the other wrapped around the waist of a wiry young woman. Mjolnir hangs from his belt, and Bruce wonders how the hell he got it past the TSA.

"My friends, it is so good to see you again!" The Asgardian's voice makes the expanse of the room feel confining. "I have brought my beloved, Lady Jane Foster, to meet you all."

"Hi," Jane says with a little wave. "I've been watching you guys on the news, and on more celebrity gossip sites than I should probably admit to. It's nice to meet you in person."

"Great," Tony says. "There will be plenty of time to talk over dinner at Le Bernardin, for now let me show you the rest of the house. You guys only need one room, right?"

"Yeah," Jane says with a blush.

Thor beams and Tony looks elated. "Finally! Another normal couple who does normal couple stuff. Pepper, weren't you just saying something about wanting to do the whole double date thing?"

Pepper's already making her way across the room. She takes Jane's hand with both of hers. "I was explaining that, when we go out, I like to have a real conversation without an eighty percent chance of you dropping into a monologue about your latest invention," she says to Tony over her shoulder. "You were the one who said we might need to bring another couple in if there's going to be any hope of lowering those odds."

Jane laughs. "Having an actual dinner conversation where I don't have to ask what every third object or place mentioned is sounds wonderful."

Pepper joins their tour, and the four walk off, leaving silence in their wake.

Clint breaks it. "I think we're supposed to be insulted," he says to Natasha.

"Are you saying you want to go on a double date with Tony and Pepper?" she asks.

"I just want to watch you make small talk for two hours while also trying to enjoy yourself."

"What do you think all of my conversations with you are?" she asks, smirking at him.

Clint raises a hand to his chest. "You wound me, Romanoff!" he says, rising from the armrest and crossing the room in a huff. He lands in the seat vacated by Pepper and shakes his head at Bruce. "This is what I get for trying to be friends with a black widow."

"You could always catch her in a cup and move her outside," Bruce offers quietly.

Clint drops his head back and laughs, eyes closed and mouth wide open. Bruce glances from him to Natasha to make sure she's not insulted, and catches her smiling at him conspiratorially. Bruce frowns in confusion and Natasha shakes the expression away.

Maybe he's just reading her wrong.

* * *

Steve's the one who brings up the question that's been buzzing in the back of Bruce's mind since he first heard about the lightning over New Mexico. He asks it as the servers clear away the forth course to make room for the fifth. "Thor, what ended up happening to Loki?"

Thor's expression falls. "My brother is being punished for his crimes."

"From what I've read, though, when you tried to exterminate a race of aliens you only had to spend a few days in exile before getting your powers back," Steve presses.

"Do you dare to doubt the Allfather's judgment?" Thor demands, voice booming. Tony has bought out the restaurant for the evening, so there aren't any other patrons they need to worry about overhearing, but several of the servers are trading glances.

Steve rolls his shoulders and straightens his spine. "I just want to be sure he won't be coming back here anytime soon."

"I assure you that my brother is paying for what he has done to Midgard," Thor says darkly. "If he is ever allowed to return here—and, unless his circumstances change greatly, that is unlikely—it will not be until long past the close of your lifetime."

Steve looks less than convinced, but Thor's stony expression doesn't allow for any further questioning. Tony turns to Jane and asks her about her latest research, and after reaching for Thor's hand, she begins to explain what she's been working on.

The evening slowly recovers from there.

* * *

It's sometime in the early morning when Bruce wakes to the sound of JARVIS' calm voice.

"Sir," the AI says, "Tony has requested the team's immediate presence in the living room."

"Thanks," Bruce mumbles, digging his palms into his eye sockets. "Tell him I'm on my way."

He can hear Tony before he sees him. Muffled shouting fills the air even through the elevator doors. They open to reveal that Clint and Steve have beat Bruce to the living room. Tony is standing inches away from Clint, screaming in his face.

"What the hell? What the fucking hell? You knew about this and you just, what? Went along with it? Did you agree with them? Did you think it was okay?"

Clint's expression is closed off and angry, he opens his mouth to respond, but stops when he sees Bruce. Tony follows his gaze, fury in his eyes. It changes into something else as Bruce steps into the room.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Tony demands.

Bruce wonders which of the Hulk's rampages Tony has uncovered. "I'm sorry, what are you...?"

"You didn't think to mention that the agency we work with had you in solitary for nine months?"

Bruce swallows. He's simultaneously relieved and concerned in a whole new way. "It was eight months. I was able to have visitors after that."

"Eight months," Tony repeats. "And what would have happened if Loki hadn't showed up and given SHIELD a reason to let you out?"

Bruce doesn't have to speculate. He'd be dead by now, nothing left of him but a carpet stain and an unmarked grave.

"Tony," Bruce begins, but Tony is shaking his head in a way that makes Bruce hold his words.

"How the hell can you be okay with that? You live in a house with two of the bastards who did this to you and you don't even blink when Fury snaps his fingers and we all hop to like good little pets?"

"They did exactly what anyone would do with a violent murderer; they put me away where I couldn't hurt anyone else." Bruce's voice echoes in his ears like it's coming from somewhere other than his own mouth. "They weren't cruel about it; they'd give me just about anything I asked for."

"Eight months all alone and that's not cruelty," Tony says.

The elevator dings behind him and Bruce glances over his shoulder to watch Natasha and Thor join the group. Natasha's in her uniform, but Thor is wearing nothing but a pair of red boxers. Bruce wonders briefly whether he sleeps in them normally, or whether Jane insisted he put something on before he left their room.

"What has happened?" Thor asks, meeting the gaze of each Avenger in turn.

"I've been reading through the files SHIELD keeps on us, and I finally got to Banner's." Tony explains. "Apparently, SHIELD locked him away for almost a year."

It's then that Bruce notices the tremor in Tony's profile.

"Tony, are you alright?" he asks.

The billionaire turns, and there's confusion layered on top of the rage. "How can you be okay with what they did?" he demands again. "How can you let them get away with it?"

Bruce doesn't know how to answer. "What would you want me to do?" he asks. "They probably saved lives by locking me away, and now I've somehow ended up saving lives by working with them. Shouldn't that be a good thing?"

"Yeah, because the end always justifies the means, isn't that what history always teaches us?" Tony demands, and Bruce realizes with a jolt that he knows why this is affecting Tony so deeply. Bruce was in Calcutta when it happened, so the the news didn't actually reach him in real time, but he read afterward about how Tony Stark was kidnapped by terrorists and held for ransom in the Middle East until he managed to build his first Iron Man suit and escape.

"It wasn't the same as what happened to you," Bruce says quietly. "I was a murderer."

"People called me the Merchant of Death," Tony shoots back.

"A cave in the desert surrounded by people carrying machine guns isn't the same as an apartment in the city."

"So maybe it was worse for me, does that excuse what they did to you?"

"They didn't—" Bruce begins, but Tony cuts him off.

"Do you ever have nightmares about it? Do you do things just to remind yourself that you're free to do them? Do you have that fear you can't shake that they'll send you back there?" Tony's hand rises absently to trace the edge of the arc reactor beneath his shirt. "Can you tell me you're really okay after that?"

"This seems like a sensitive issue," Steve says when Bruce doesn't respond. "I think we could let it sit for the night and decide in the morning how we want to handle this."

"Really?" Tony asks. "Because I think I should grab my suit right now and go tell Fury what I think about his tactics."

"I believe Tony is right," Thor says. "Bruce is our brother in arms and we should seek Fury out and demand to know why he chose to treat him in such an appalling way."

Natasha grits her teeth like she'd much rather be having any other conversation than this one, but takes a step forward anyway. "SHIELD has protocols for situations where we have to handle people who aren't purposely destructive, but who still pose a significant risk to themselves or others. The first and easiest choice is to put the individual down, the second, kinder, option is to detain them in a way that minimizes their potential to hurt others while still being humane. That's exactly what Fury did."

"Yeah, because if it's _protocol _then we shouldn't have a problem with it," Tony snaps. "There's no flashing red arrows pointing to a screwed up system there."

"Arguing about this tonight isn't going to help anything!" Steve says, voice rising. "Everyone, take a few hours to finish sleeping and think it over and we can reconvene in the morning."

Tony sneers. "What's the matter, Rogers, are you afraid of Fury?"

Steve starts on a rebuttal, and that's when Bruce walks out of the room. He doesn't stop until he's seated at the main computer in his lab. A few clicks open Tony's music library and he turns Led Zeppelin up until the music rattles his limbs more than his pulse does. He slouches in his seat and massages his hands.

The music fades out mid-song and JARVIS' voice overthrows the speakers. "Sir, Agent Barton is asking permission to enter."

Bruce swivels his chair to glance at the glass wall where the door to the lab is set. Clint waves at him from behind the pane.

Bruce motions him inside before twisting back to turn down the music that JARVIS has let start up again.

"You know," Clint notes, crossing the room and leaning against the desk to look down at Bruce. "If someone had asked me to pick a music genre for you, I would have gone with classical."

Bruce runs a hand through his hair. "Some classical is okay, but a lot of it is too passionate for someone who spends so much time trying to keep their emotions under control."

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense," Clint says.

"How about you?"

Clint snorts, reaching over Bruce's keyboard for the pen that's lying beside it. He begins taking it apart. "Natasha accuses me of being a hipster, so whatever music you associate with that I probably go for."

"You're a 20-something art student who likes ironic mustaches?" Bruce asks.

"Clearly living in the third world for a while didn't keep you from figuring out current stereotypes. She just uses it to insult the fact that I tend to listen to more obscure bands."

"That's so kind of her."

Clint has the pen broken into four different pieces and he's using the tube of ink to dab little navy freckles on the back of his injured hand.

"So, who do you side with?" Bruce asks.

"What?" Clint's eyebrows rise, but he doesn't look up from his work.

"The argument in the living room. What's your opinion?"

"Oh." He twirls the tube between his fingers while he thinks. "I guess it starts with the fact that people like to fear things they don't understand and everything goes to hell from there. You probably didn't need to be locked away in the first place, but even if you did, I think it was cruel to make you stick it out alone. Okay, so maybe visitors might not have been the best thing some days, but you could have skyped or something."

Bruce laughs, pulling his feet up onto the edge of the chair and wrapping his arms around his knees, because if he doesn't there's no telling how far his emotions will swing in the other direction as his selfish brain asks, 'Then why didn't you help me sooner?'

"It really doesn't matter what I think, though," Clint says. "Yours is the opinion of the hour."

Bruce returns to massaging his hands so he doesn't have to look at Clint. "I just want it to be over so I don't have to think about it any more."

"You don't have a vengeful bone in your body, do you, Banner? You're the biggest saint out of all of us, and that's including the god." Clint pushes the corner of Bruce's chair with the ball of his foot and Bruce spins in a slow circle. "You should be the poster boy for the Avengers or something."

"Yeah, the skinny, tongue-twisted man that no one recognizes. They could put my face on lunchboxes."

"I'd buy one," Clint offers.

"Tony probably would, too; he likes things that are funny."

Clint smiles down at the artwork he's created on his hand, but there's something off about the expression.

"Do you—" Bruce begins, before the lab door slams open and Tony enters. The rest of the team is a half step behind him, all dressed up for a battle against evil.

"We're going to SHIELD," Tony says. "Fury needs to know that we don't support abuse, especially when it comes to one of our own."

"We'd like you there with us," Steve adds, looking at Bruce intensely. "Although if talking to Fury will bring up memories you'd prefer not to face again, we would understand if you chose not to come."

Everything in Bruce screams for him to stay as far away from SHIELD as he can, but if he's not there he won't know what's being said, and if things go badly and SHIELD decides their prisoner-turned-hero is too much of a liability and want to send him back to the apartment, he needs to be there to fight it. Or, at least, be there so he knows it's happening. So he's not woken again in the middle of the night to a needle in his neck and a swarm of people in black uniforms who swim before his eyes and melt away to eight months of silence.

"I'll go," Bruce says, standing.

Clint steps forward, close enough that his arm brushes against Bruce's. "Fury's not going to like this."

"If you think I give a fuck what Fury likes—" Tony starts, but Clint speaks over him.

"I'm just saying—and I'm guessing Nat's already covered this, but it's worth repeating—that this is long haul shit right here. This is us against the most powerful agency on the planet; they're not used to having opposition they couldn't eradicate with a couple well-placed agents, and I'd know, because I usually was one of the people on those teams. You want to make Fury see reason? Great, but you need to realize that man has never apologized for anything in his life, and he's not likely to see the need to start now over the handling of a prisoner SHIELD deemed too dangerous to leave on the loose."

"So we'll make it a first time for him," Tony says. "I can be extra persuasive in my suit."

"No," Bruce blurts out. Five pairs of eyes latch onto him. He digs his short thumbnails into the curve of his index fingers to keep himself focused. "If you really want to do this then it can't be with the suit or with weapons. If you go in there and try to bully him down you'll just reinforce his idea that some people are too dangerous to be out in society. If you really want to try to change things then you have to do it with words.

"Please," he adds when the rest of the team can't seem to think of anything to say.

"Banner's right," Steve says, Captain America ringing in his tone. "Everyone leaves their weapons here—Tony, that includes the suit. We're going to show Fury that we aren't the monsters in this situation."

Thor's knuckles turn white around Mjolnir's handle. "And if the director cannot be made to see reason, what then?"

"We aren't called the Avengers for nothing," Tony says. "We'll just have to remind him of that."

Bruce is getting an itch beneath his skin that reminds him he hasn't been up on the roof in over twelve hours, and really all he wants is a couple minutes with the New York skyline and maybe a cup of chamomile, although he'll take anything, really, over the idea of going up against SHIELD. Running and hiding are his main skill set; confrontation and aggression are more the Hulk's forte, and he'd prefer to stay as far away from them as possible.

"Let's go," Steve commands, and the team follows.

Bruce watches the squared shoulders and purposeful steps of the people who want to badly to right what they've decided is a terrible wrong. He should probably be feeling hope right now, or pride, or appreciation, or something fulfilling like that. All he can drudge up is a pretty strong sensation of nausea.

A hand lands on his right shoulder blade, and Bruce jumps at the contact. Clint, he realizes, hasn't hurried to follow the others.

"I guess we're not really the kind of team that can just leave things alone," Clint notes.

Laughter bubbles up in Bruce's chest and enters the world in a desperate, anxious garble.

Clint's grip tightens, six points of contact, and though Bruce is pretty sure he can't actually feel them, his mind supplies the exact positions of the calluses he's noticed on Clint's hand, where decades of archery practice have planted their memory in his skin.

"It's going to be fine," Clint says, the sincerity in his words running cool water through Bruce's nerves.

The touch ends and Clint walks from the room like nothing had happened. Maybe it hadn't. Maybe that's just how Clint is; steady reassurances to teammates before a conflict. It's nothing special; it just means he's a decent human being.

But Bruce can feel the ghost of Clint's hand on his shoulder urging him forward as he slowly follows.

He feels a bit like Clint pulled something out of him when he took his hand away, and Bruce doesn't know what that something was or if he needs it or if this is just a testament to the fact that not all of his sanity survived him time with SHIELD.

He still wants a cup of tea.


	10. Chapter 10

I do not own any aspect of The Avengers, or any of Marvel's other creations.

Sorry for the posting delay; I finally landed a real job that, while being something I really enjoy, involves insanely long hours and will slow my posting schedule a bit more than I would like. I should also mention that someone left a review requesting that this be a gen fic rather than Hulkeye, and while I really appreciate all of the comments and suggestions that I receive, I need to warn you all that this will definitely be Clint/Bruce.

Thank you, as always, for your interest in this story. I'm so glad you guys seem to be enjoying it so far.

-M.

* * *

Bruce sits in the Quinjet, bracketed by Tony and Natasha, and focuses on the small bones that give shape to his right hand. He pinches each one between the index finger and thumb of his left hand and recites the name to himself. Twenty-seven bones he learned in A&P and managed never to forget, if only because they make for a decent calming exercise. It's nothing impressive enough to ward off a transformation, but it's good for idle worry and the jitters of mild to moderate anxiety.

The Helicarrier is playing its role as a ship a few miles off the coast. Natasha made a call to ensure that Fury was there and waiting for the team's arrival just after their takeoff, but the conversation was brief, and there's been nothing but the hum of the jet's engines to fill the silence ever since.

It's not a peaceful hush. Movement flickers in the corner of Bruce's eye every time Tony switches his continuous glare from the side of Natasha's face to the back of Clint's head, and Steve and Thor sit with sharp features and tense muscles across the aisle.

The sensation of being on the edge of battle pricks under Bruce's skin, and he's equal parts surprised and abashed by the whispered wish in his head that he could let the Hulk out to deal with this fight and come back to himself after it's finished to pick up the pieces.

He's run out of bones to name, so Bruce switches to tracing the lines of his palm: Life, Head, Heart, Sun, Mercury, Fate. He went to a palm reader once, back when he was an undergrad. It was the Saturday after winter finals his sophomore year, and although he has never held any belief in divination, he couldn't help thinking that maybe a good reading might be a positive omen in regard to his grades.

The palmist had looked first at his right hand, then at his left, then at his right again, before noting that he was missing the girdle of Venus on both palms. She told him that the girdle was connected to emotions, and that it told the reader how well their subject kept their emotions in control. Bruce had tried not to laugh at the time, because 'mild-mannered' was the truest definition of his character. He had let himself laugh about it later, when the sight of a palm reader's shop in Brazil had reminded him of that afternoon, but it had been out of bitterness rather than mirth.

"Time to put the finishing touches on those speeches you're all writing in your heads," Clint announces. "We'll be landing in just under five minutes."

Tony's expression carves into a grin. "Let's go give that bastard hell."

"We're going to talk about things like civilized people," Steve reminds him, a thread of warning woven through his words.

"Come on, Captain," Tony shoots back, unlocking his seatbelt like pilots always remind their passengers not to do right before the landing. "This is our Declaration of Independence; our Bill of Rights. We're throwing off tyranny and staking a claim in the name of freedom. Isn't this the sort of thing that lights a fire under your star-spangled ass?"

The jet tips forward and then bounces with a jolt that rocks the cabin, causing Tony's shoulder to slam into Bruce's. He offers a quick 'sorry' as the plane vibrates to a stop and a clicking chorus of seatbelts unlatching fills the air.

"Welcome aboard," Clint says, dropping his headset onto the console and opening the jet's door.

Agent Hill is waiting for them on the runway.

Bruce's stomach tightens into a black hole in the middle of his abdomen, but his muscles still react to his mind's commands and so he manages, with stiff movements, to follow Hill's lead into the carrier.

At first he thinks it's a coincidence that he finds himself at the center of the cluster of Avengers, but as they move through the hallways the team shifts around him, an organic shield between him and the rest of the ship.

Bruce wonders if they have any idea how much the gesture means to him.

Hill leads them to a room that Bruce passed a few times during his time on the Helicarrier but has never seen the inside of. Fury is waiting for them at the head of a large oval conference table. He dismisses Hill with a nod and gestures for the team to sit. Tony drops into the chair at the end opposite Fury and kicks his heels up onto the edge of the table as the others shuffle into place. Bruce takes the seat beside Tony because it's the farthest from Fury he can get and Clint lands in the chair next to him. The archer leans forward in his seat and runs his index finger in quick lines across the glossy surface of the tabletop, leaving a series of smudges in its wake.

"So," Fury begins. "Does anyone want to tell me what the hell was so important that it couldn't wait until morning?"

"Maybe you could start by telling us why one of earth's mightiest heroes spent a year locked away in a SHIELD facility," Tony responds.

Fury's eye slides toward Bruce, who finds a sudden interest in creating smudges of his own on the table's glossy surface.

"You didn't seriously come here to argue about SHIELD's policy on handling those who have proven themselves to be a significant threat to the world, did you?" Fury asks, beginning to rise from his seat with the clear intention of dismissing their late night meeting.

"I'd be a threat too if I was attacked by soldiers with guns and tanks every time I made an appearance," Tony spits out.

Fury doesn't acknowledge him. "Banner, if you'd like to file a complaint regarding how the neutralization of the threat that your experimenting posed, then SHIELD would be more than happy to consider it. Now, unless you've come with some new information worth sharing, the rest of you are welcome to get the hell of my ship."

"Yeah, see, you're not listening, though." Tony slides his heels off the table and leans forward in his chair. "The world's defenders—the team _you_ created—just showed up on your doorstep with a problem, and unless you're ready for the Avengers' views on the usefulness of SHIELD and the need for its continued existence to change drastically, I'd suggest sitting your ass back down and trying very hard to make us happy."

"If I were you, Stark, I would think carefully about what the next words out of my mouth were going to be, because that sounded almost like a threat against the lead military law-enforcement agency on the planet, and for all the power and technology you have at your disposal, we are not the kind of enemies you want to make."

"Really? Because it seems to me we're the ones you call when things get too out of control for SHIELD to handle, making _us_ the kind of enemies _you_ don't want to make. Plus, in a battle between its beloved heroes and some secretive government organization, who do you think the world is going to side with?"

"Director, we're not here looking for a fight," Steve cuts in. "But we do want SHIELD to be aware that the Avengers do not support the threat neutralization tactics that we've seen. Going forward, we would like to set up a system where we're consulted before your agency makes any more attempts to handle potential threats."

"SHIELD is not accountable to you and we are under no obligation to share any information whatsoever with the Avengers. You were our initiative and you are under our authority," Fury says in a tone that threatens to crumble mountains.

"So you expect us to sit by while you set up your own Guantanamo?" Tony demands, fists landing solidly on the table as he jumps to his feet to lean over them.

"The humane handling of one global threat is hardly the foundation for a detention camp," Fury spits out. "But even if it were, we would not be overstepping our authority in any way by creating one. SHIELD exists to protect the world, and that's exactly what we're going to do, with or without your approval."

"I am here as a defender of Midgard, as well," Thor says. "Yet I cannot condone the detention of a good man in the name of protection. You claim that you are for the good of the world; why, then, would you seek to lock Banner away when it has become so obvious that his monster needs only space, direction, and a clear enemy in order to become a formidable ally?"

Fury snorts. "Maybe you're forgetting his actions on this ship when he was so clearly out of control that he attacked and tried to kill our people, including some of you."

Bruce jumps at the touch of a hand on his wrist, and he follows the limb upward to where Clint is watching him with a frown. It's then that Bruce realizes he's shaking.

Clint's eyes slide to Natasha, and the assassin shakes her head minutely before turning her focus to Fury.

"Everything with power is dangerous," Natasha says, her voice quiet and her expression smooth. "That's why SHIELD keeps constant tabs on all of us. But danger isn't the same as a threat; otherwise you would have tried to lock us all away instead of putting us together to fight the Chitauri. We're the most dangerous people on the planet right now, and we're asking that you have the decency to let us help make decisions about how you handle other beings that you consider a potential problem."

Clint's hand is moving again, his index finger beginning to rub small circles over Bruce's pulse point. Bruce realizes that, on top of the shaking that doesn't seem to have abated any, his heartbeat has begun to pick up speed. He feels like a child; struggling to control his own emotions while others fight on his behalf. It makes him more angry than he'd like to admit to, more angry than is safe on a contained craft where there's no traditional enemy and no room for the other guy to blow off some steam safely.

Clint must notice his slide towards crisis picking up speed. The archer's on his feet in an instant, tugging Bruce out of his chair and offering the others a brisk, "We'll let you sort of the details on your own. Come and find us when everything's settled," before retracing their steps back out into the smell of the ocean and the sound of the waves.

The lights on the flight deck are bright enough to block out the stars, but Bruce looks up anyway, imagining the positioning of the constellations over their heads. It's not perfect, not with the planes and the tarmac and the SHIELD officers giving them wary glances as they walk past, but the wind scatters Bruce's curls over his forehead and he can look from horizon to horizon; East Coast on one side, open Atlantic on the other, and it's good enough.

Clint drops Bruce's arm, and Bruce expects him to back away, but instead the archer moves closer, shoving Bruce with a force that makes Bruce wonder, absently, if he should really be applying that much pressure to his broken wrist. Bruce takes a heavy step back.

Clint follows the retreat, pushing him again. "Do it," he says.

"Do what?" Bruce asks, although the nausea rising in his stomach hints that he already knows what Clint is referring to.

"You were about to change, so change."

Bruce shakes his head, darting backward as Clint closes in again. "No."

Clint movements are fluid, and he has the advantage of not having to travel backwards. He shoves Bruce again, hard, and Bruce staggers, pulse throbbing in his temples. "Why should Fury agree to anything we're asking if you're more on his side then you are on ours?"

"I'm not on his side," Bruce says.

"Really? I think you're more scared of the Hulk than he is."

Agents are staring. Bruce wonders how long it will be before they decide to step in.

"Clint," Bruce says quietly, trying to give a subtle gesture towards their audience.

If Clint notices, he doesn't let on. "You know why Fury's okay with you being out of your cage now? Because you don't need the concrete and steel anymore; you've taken the cell and rebuilt it in your mind where nothing can get in and damage it, not even you. You're just as trapped as you ever were, and Stockholm Syndrome tells you you're better off that way."

Clint slams his palms into Bruce's clavicles again, the force strong enough that Bruce trips over his own feet and lands hard on his left knee. The archer stands over him, expression deadly, and fear lights up in Bruce's brain.

Then Clint is crouching down, eyes level with Bruce's and features softening. "I'm not any better than he is; just one more person trying to tell you what to do. Don't listen to any of us, but don't listen to the fear either. You're not alone anymore; it's not just you and the Hulk, it's you and him and the rest of our team; five people who are ready to get up in the middle of the night to make sure you two are okay."

Bruce curls in on himself a bit more, running his fingers into his hair and tightening them for the illusion of control over something. He's not helping his concept of being a child. His chest tightens and his breathing turns to gasps.

His thoughts trace back over Clint's words and something shifts inside his mind, something catching the light for the first time, something, something, something rattling around inside him and bouncing off the walls Clint described so perfectly. It's a frenzied madness, an illogic—the idea that the past can somehow be rewritten by the present, that the Hulk can do anything on this ship besides wound and destroy—but he raises his head to meet Clint's gaze.

Clint is smiling. "Let him out," he says. "Let him out and I'll take care of him."

"How?" Bruce asks, resolve cracking under the pressure of the thought that's ricocheting in his brain. "You don't even have your bow with you."

"I don't need it," Clint says. "Let him out."

Bruce rises. He looks around at the agents still watching their exchange and bares his teeth at them in the illusion of a smile, "I'd get back if I were you."

Clint jumps to his feet, the expression of a child on Christmas morning bright on his features.

"This is stupid," Bruce tells him.

"All the best plans are," Clint agrees. "I'll see you soon, okay?"

Bruce nods, and lets his mind fill with static.


	11. Chapter 11

I do not own any aspect of The Avengers, or any of Marvel's other creations.

I'm sure most of you Hulkeye fans are already familiar with Matryoshkha's fics, but for those of you who aren't, put your reading of this chapter on hold and type blodnasirr dot livejournal dot com into your address bar. I've read a lot of Hulkeye fics, and she has more consistently phenomenal work than anybody I've seen. Her stories are almost all based on EMH, but even if you haven't seen the show (like me) they're still amazing. 'Frame Thy Fearful Symmetry,' 'Succour a Poor Man Without Crushing,' and 'The Room Where the Unloved Go' are my favorites, but they're all great. I stumbled across her site recently and basically didn't sleep until I had read everything she'd written. You should know that almost all of her stuff is rated higher than mine, so if that's not your thing then you might want to use caution.

-M.

* * *

It's pain first. Burning agony so overwhelming it short-circuits Bruce's thoughts and cripples his ability to breathe in anything more than short, shallow gasps. He, the man who stuck the barrel of a gun in his mouth not two years ago and pulled the trigger, hasn't felt this much pain in a long time. He wonders if this means SHIELD has found some way to curtail his time on the planet and realizes, with a wave of shock almost as strong as the pain, that he's not so sure he wants that anymore.

The noise comes second. Shrill screams and rapid gunshots fade in and out between explosions that make Bruce's ears pop and ring. There's something else, too; something threading it all together, but Bruce has to concentrate to realize it's a voice, steady and quick and somewhere a few feet up and a step or two away.

"Come on, Bruce, come on. Cap, watch out for the yellow one coming up fast on your ten o'clock. Bruce, wake up, come on, wake up so we can get you out of here. Widow, back off those two and let Thor handle them; I need you covering my ass over here. Bruce, wake the fuck up."

Bruce sorts out which muscles control his eyelids and opens them, before snapping them shut an instant later in reaction to the sunlight. He's been gone for a while, then.

Bruce garbles a few consonants to the outline of Hawkeye—bow raised, splinted arm reaching back for another arrow—that's been burned into his retinas. The non-words scrape up his throat and over his lips like broken glass.

"Widow," Hawkeye's voice barks.

A second later Bruce feels two fingers on his neck, pressing for a pulse, and several more brushing over his shoulder. The light contact is enough to make Bruce gasp in pain.

"Bruce is conscious. His pulse is stable. The chemical burns on his left shoulder and arm are looking worse, but the skin seems to be intact. I'm going to move him. Widow, take my spot; Iron Man, cover me."

The fingers on Bruce's left shoulder are replaced by a hand on his left arm, and he tries not to scream as he's dragged to his feet, his arm thrown around a pair of shoulders while another hand grips his right hip.

"I'm sorry," Clint says through what sounds like gritted teeth. "We've got to get you out of here before we can do anything about the pain."

There's another explosion what sounds like yards away from them, and Clint spits out a curse, dragging Bruce off to the right.

Bruce cracks his eyes open again, trying to figure out what's going on. There's concrete beneath his feet and skyscrapers poking up in all directions. Bruce can see Natasha a few feet away on the edge of what Bruce realizes is a roof, guns in both hands and eyes in constant movement. There are several giant wraith-like creatures floating around in the air, but Natasha's attention seems to be focused down below the roof's edge.

Red and gold flash into view as Iron Man lands in front of Clint and Bruce. "I can give you a lift," he offers. "It'll be faster than taking the elevator."

"Yeah, but we're less likely to be attacked when we're not attached to a flying red target," Clint counters, pulling Bruce towards what Bruce guesses is the door to the stairs.

"Millions of dollars in R&D and you'd prefer to stand around in a metal box," Tony mutters, but Bruce can hear the thudding footsteps of the suit moving to follow them.

"What happened?" Bruce chokes out. The question sends him spiraling into a coughing fit. He doubles over in pain and holds his free hand to his mouth. When he pulls it away his palm and fingers are coated in blood.

"The city's been attacked by sentient forms of the different elements," Tony explains as Bruce stumbles through the door, down a flight of steps, and into an elevator. His own breathing and Clint's hands on his body are a constant torture. "Not all of them, obviously. We've seen Magnesium, Carbon, Fluorine, Chlorine, and Bromine—that's the one responsible for you looking and feeling like shit right now."

Bromine: liquid, vapor; corrosive to skin and an irritant to the nose, throat, and respiratory system. He's going to need a shower as soon as possible. The burning in his mouth and throat is a bad sign, as is the fact that the reaction was enough to revert him back to human. The effects don't usually hit full potency until a few hours after the exposure, but the fact that he's conscious is probably a good omen.

Bruce tries to decide if it's worth the pain to attempt asking for further explanation. Clint seems to guess his train of thought before he's reached a conclusion.

"They showed up about four hours ago, and their mission is to either wipe the human race out or turn us into element-human hybrids."

"How did we get back to the city?" Bruce asks between breaths, trying to stave off another coughing fit.

"Widow, Captain and I took the Quinjet. Thor flew, and the Hulk was carried by Iron Man."

"Your alter ego's quite the squirmer," Tony adds. "The trip took twice as long because I kept having to fish you back out of the water."

Bruce shifts his weight to lean against the wall of the elevator so Clint doesn't have to support him. He expects the man to step away, but instead Clint moves with him, maintaining their contact.

"How are the others?" Bruce asks.

"Well enough that two of us can commit some time to getting you to safety," Tony says.

"The only problem is we're still not quite sure how to stop them," Clint adds.

"I could try to change back again," Bruce offers quietly, doing a quick analysis of his wounds and how long he could hold out as the Hulk before succumbing to them.

Clint shifts, leaning forward so he can catch Bruce's gaze, eyes ice-blue and expression too layered for Bruce to spare the energy to decipher. "You know that's the first time I've ever heard of you offering to change?" he asks. "Any other time and I'd jump at that, but not now. You can be a superhero again when you're healed."

Bruce snorts at Clint's terminology, but he can't pull his mind far enough away from the pain to construct a witty retort.

The elevator dings before anyone has anything else to say.

"Okay, you've made it street level, where half of the monsters are running around," Tony notes as Clint draws Bruce away from the side of the elevator and toward the door. "What's the second half of your plan?"

"Steal a car and head to a hospital," Clint says.

"You'll be a slow-moving target and you're not going to find a hospital anywhere within a five mile radius that's not inundated with victims of the attack. Let me fly the two of you back to the tower; I've got medical supplies there and JARVIS can walk you through whatever you need to do to help him."

Clint seems less than convinced, but the longer they wait the more Bruce can feel the bromine residue eating away at him. "That would be good," he offers.

Clint nods slowly. "Keep us low to the ground and away from the battle's hotspots."

"Of course," Tony says, stepping into the near non-existent space between Bruce and Clint and wrapping an arm around each of their waists. "I'm nothing if not the spirit of discretion."

Clint snorts. Bruce tries to offer a response, but the sound is drowned out in a gag as Tony's grip tightens unbearably and they begin to hurdle sideways toward an alleyway.

Bruce squeezes his eyes shut and counts as high as he can in Russian to distract himself from the sensations.

It feels like an eternity before their speed slows and the ground returns beneath his feet.

Tony lets go as they enter front doors. "JARVIS," he shouts. "Bruce has been exposed to bromine. Do a full-body analysis and walk Barton through the treatment. And you might as well keep the supplies out when you're done; with our luck someone else is going to end up needing them." The last of the words trail off as he steps outside and heads back to the battle.

"Mr. Barton," JARVIS says, "If you would be so kind as to help Dr. Banner into the elevator, we can take him up to the medical ward on the twenty-third floor."

"No," Bruce says. "My room first. I need to try to wash the residue off my skin."

Clint is already helping him into the elevator before JARVIS says, "Very good, sir."

"How long was I unconscious?" Bruce asks as he hits the button for his floor.

"Just under an hour. The Hulk was doing fine, and then Bromine grabbed onto your arm and you couldn't shake him off. You were unconscious in six minutes and back to human in another two. Thor flew you up to the roof after that, but we didn't have time to move you anywhere else at first."

"Okay," Bruce breathes, adding the information to what he already knows. The elevator dings and Clint pulls him down the hallway and to his door. Bruce pushes it open and points Clint in the direction of the bathroom. He half expects Clint to leave him at the bathroom door, but the archer helps him inside, leans him against the countertop, and steps over to the shower to turn on the water.

It's then that Bruce has the presence of mind to—in a jolt of self-consciousness—glance down to see if his pants survived his transformation. They're ripped in several places, but thankfully still intact.

"Do you need a special kind of soap or anything?" Clint asks, turning back to him.

Bruce shakes his head. "What's in there should be fine. I'll have JARVIS tell me where to find some sodium carbonate to treat the burns when I'm done, but for now I just need to wash off."

Clint takes a step closer to Bruce. The bathroom, which is at least double the largest one Bruce has ever had before moving here, begins to feel too small. Clint raises his hand and gently runs his fingers over the burns on Bruce's shoulder and down his arm. His touch softer than on the roof; a tingling sensation on the damaged skin rather than straight pain. Part of Bruce wants to pull away and part of him wonders if this is something he should probably confess to Natasha later and a sudden, viciously strong part of him wants to lean into the contact; wants, confusingly, to touch back.

A shiver runs through Bruce at that realization, and Clint drops his hand. "Sorry," the archer says, averting his gaze and putting a good foot of extra space between them.

Clint frowns after a moment and his eyes catch Bruce's again. It's then that Bruce realizes he's leaning forward, trying subconsciously to close the gap that Clint has made. Heat rushes to his cheeks and the tips of his ears as his heart begins slamming around in his chest. He begins to pull himself back when Clint's hand rises again, this time to wrap around the back of Bruce's neck.

Hot face, thundering pulse, the sensation of fingers in his hair, and then Bruce is being overwhelmed by chapped lips and the scent of leather and bowstring wax.

The kiss is nearly over before Bruce realizes what is happening. Clint pulls away with a small smile, toys with the tips of the hair at the base of Bruce's skull, and then leaves the room in silence.

Bruce is glad for his grip on the countertop as he closes his eyes and rations his breaths.

It's not until he's stripped out of his pants and stepped under the spray of the three showerheads that his brain reminds him he's not actually gay.

He spends the rest of the shower trying to sort things out.


	12. Chapter 12

I do not own any aspect of The Avengers, or any of Marvel's other creations.

Rowsdowersavesus asked if I had heard of the artist Gingerhaze, who draws Hulkeye among other things. I have heard of her and I love her work! For those of you who haven't seen her stuff, you can check her out at gingerhaze dot tumblr dot com, and to see her Hulkeye stuff just add slash tagged slash hulkeye to the end of that.

Thank you guys so much for all of the time you've devoted to this fic; I'm so glad you're enjoying it so far!

-M.

* * *

It takes more time and energy than Bruce feels like he has right at the moment to scrub his skin to his satisfaction. By the time he's done, the steam from the shower has eased the pain in his throat and lungs a little, but the chemical burns on his skin feel open and salted.

He leaves the bathroom exhausted, shaking, and convinced that the kiss was nothing more than an 'I'm so glad you didn't die' rush of adrenaline. A band of brothers sort of thing.

Bruce is dressed in nothing but a towel slung around his hips when he walks into his bedroom to find Clint balanced on the back of the sofa by the fireplace in a one-armed handstand. The archer cranes his neck, eyes meeting Bruce's for an instant before his legs drop—back arching into a bridge—and he plants his feet on the edge of the couch. Clint steps lightly to the ground like he hasn't just blurred the laws of gravity.

Bruce is stuck in the no man's land between embarrassment and curiosity. He ensures that his towel will stay in place with one hand and asks, "Where did you learn to do that?"

"I ran away and joined the circus when I was a kid," Clint says.

Bruce waits for the laugh that will signal that Clint is joking. It doesn't come.

"JARVIS said sodium carbonate meant washing soda," Clint says instead, reaching for a yellow box that wasn't on Bruce's coffee table when he last walked through the room. "He told me where to find it."

"Thanks," Bruce says, reaching for the box. "Have you heard anything from the others?"

"I checked in with Nat a few minutes ago; she said that the elements disappear into thin air when cornered. They're down to three last I heard, and she said the team would probably be back here in an hour or two."

"Good," Bruce says, waiting for Clint to head for the door. The mention of Natasha is enough to make him feel guilty for the kiss, regardless of how obvious it was that Clint didn't mean it in any sort of romantic way.

Instead, the archer gestures to the box in Bruce's hand. "How are you supposed to apply that?"

"I think the easiest way would be to make a paste, smear it on, and then cover it with some kind of bandage."

"Okay," Clint says. "I'll get some gauze and something to mix the stuff in and let you put some shorts on before your blush heats up any more and catches your hair on fire."

Bruce drops his gaze. He hadn't noticed the heat in his cheeks, but now that Clint has said something he can feel it intensify. He covers his face with his free hand.

Clint chuckles on his way out of the room.

By the time he returns, Bruce has pulled on a pair of jeans and thought about adding a tank top, only to dismiss the idea a second later when he realized it would cover up part of his burns.

Clint drops a roll of gauze on the bedspread, plucks the box of washing soda from where Bruce set it on the dresser, and heads into the bathroom without slowing. Bruce follows him in, watching as Clint dumps several inches worth of the powder into a glass, adds some water, and stirs it into a thick white paste.

"Is this okay?" Clint asks, holding out the cup.

"Yeah." Bruce reaches to take it.

Clint pulls his hand back. "You're going to need help getting it on," he notes as he steps out of the bathroom and sits down on the bed beside the roll of gauze.

Bruce stares after him.

"Come on," Clint says, gesturing to the open stretch of duvet beside him. "JARVIS said we should get this stuff on you sooner rather than later."

Bruce runs his fingers through his wet curls, smoothing them away from his forehead, before he follows. He perches on the edge of the bed and rolls his shoulder forward so Clint can get at the burns on the back of it.

Clint smears the mixture on with his fingertips, the contact deft and gentle.

Bruce stares down at the patterns of the threads in his jeans and decides that this is just another one of those things that soldiers do for their comrades.

"What did I miss?" he asks, because this is a normal, typical interaction, which means there should be some normal, typical conversation to go along with it.

"We played tag on the flight deck," Clint says. "I'm pretty sure the Hulk won."

"How?"

"Well, he's faster than me, so it's sort of a given."

"No, I mean, how did you get him to play?" Bruce clarifies. "He doesn't play games unless there's a body count involved."

"He does if you take the time to teach him how." Clint sets the glass down on the nightstand and starts wrapping the gauze around Bruce's arm upper arm. "I had to stop a few times to remind him it was a game, but I think he had fun."

"How did SHIELD react?"

"We had a pretty big audience by the end of it. Half of the agents there know about your time in detainment; I think watching the Hulk keep his shit together was probably just as strong an argument for our cause as anything the rest of the team said to Fury."

"Did they tell you what happened with him?"

"There wasn't really time," Clint says. "I did get the impression that the meeting wasn't tied up in a nice bow, but that's not exactly surprising when it comes to our beloved director." He finishes with the gauze and raises his hands to Bruce's shoulders, twisting them gingerly so he can get a few different angles on his work.

"How does that feel?" he asks.

Bruce rolls his arm in its socket, testing his range of motion as well as the level of pain as the gauze rubs the paste into his burns. "It's good. Thank you."

"We should get you to the med ward so JARVIS can check you out," Clint says, standing. "He said there could be some serious problems if you inhaled too much bromine, and I know the Hulk spent enough time with the element that that could be a problem."

His time as the Hulk and the pain of his burns is enough that all Bruce really wants to do right now is crawl into bed, close his eyes, and float away from everything for a few hours. But JARVIS and Clint are probably right; the burning in Bruce's throat and lungs has slowly grown back since his shower, and it's probably wise not to ignore it and hope it goes away. He pushes back the pain and exhaustion and forces himself to his feet.

He and Clint walk to the elevator in silence.

Bruce hasn't actually used the medical ward before. He got the once-through on each of Tony's grand tours, but this is the first time he's needed anything inside the wing.

JARVIS seems to recall that. "If you'd be so kind as to step on the platform to your right, Dr. Banner," the AI says as they walk into the wide room, "I can do a quick scan to determine if you need further medical attention."

The platform is a steel circle raised about six inches off the floor. Bruce steps on to it, and although there's no visible machine at work, the room around him begins to hum.

"Thank you, sir," JARVIS says a moment later. "You may step down now."

"How is he?" Clint asks.

"Dr. Banner appears to have mild to moderate bromine poisoning, as expected. Unfortunately, there is no cure, but it appears that the exposure wasn't extensive enough to be devastating. With your permission, Dr. Banner, I'd like you to come back once a day so I can monitor your progress and turn you over to medical professionals if your condition worsens."

"Sure. Thanks," Bruce says, stepping off the platform just as Clint's phone begins to ring, reminding Bruce that he had his own phone on the Helicarrier but it was gone from his pocket by the time he stripped down for his shower. He's pretty sure it's at the bottom of the Atlantic by now.

"Hawkeye," Clint answers, and Bruce wonders whether he should mention the phone to SHIELD, or just ask Tony to build him a replacement.

"Do you want us there?" Clint asks the person on the other end of the call and then says, "I'll ask." He turns to Bruce. "We won and the rest of the team wants to go back to SHIELD for round two with Fury. They want to know if you'd like to be there for it."

Less than twelve hours ago Bruce had a whole collection of good reasons why he should be in on meetings concerning himself and his continued freedom, but his burns are throbbing and it feels like he's been inhaling fire for the past hour. He reaches up to settle a hand over his bandaged shoulder. "I think I'm going to sit this one out. Please tell them to keep it peaceful."

"We're going to let you guys handle it," Clint says into the phone. "Bruce says play nice if you can." He 'uh-huh's, and then hangs up the phone.

"Tasha says she'll try to keep Tony from talking, but no guarantees," he explains.

Bruce nods. He jumps when Clint catches his arm and wraps it around the archer's shoulders. "You look dead on your feet, Doctor," Clint says, his free hand curling around Bruce's waist and reminding Bruce that he's shirtless as Clint's fingers settle on the bare stretch of skin over his hipbone. "Time to get you to bed."

"I can walk on my own," Bruce tells him, trying to keep pace with Clint as the archer guides him from the room. Every point of skin on skin contact hums electric along Bruce's nerves and he wants to expand it, prolong it, distil it and study it under a microscope. The sensation is overpowering, and he needs to pull away before something happens.

"Hey." Clint's voice severs his thoughts. "We haven't even made it to first base yet and you're already looking a little green. I'm flattered that I have that effect on you, but maybe you should get some sleep before letting the other guy take over."

Bruce's muscles lock up and Clint falters slightly at the stop.

"I'm not gay," Bruce tells him.

"Okay," Clint says, left eyebrow arching.

"And you're with Natasha," Bruce continues before his brain can override his mouth.

"Really? Does she know that?"

Clint is grinning now, and between his expression, his words, and his fingers that won't let go of Bruce's wrist or hip, Bruce is getting the sensation that he can feel the planet spinning on its axis and hurling through space, and he's pretty sure he's going to lose his balance in a minute.

Or his lunch.

Or his control.

Clint, if he notices, doesn't comment on it. "Are we talking 'not gay' as in you've tried it and didn't like it or 'not gay' as in you haven't felt that way towards a guy before? I need to know my odds here."

Bruce pulls back, dropping his arm from Clint's shoulder as Clint's fingers slide from his hip to his the small of his back before falling away altogether.

"There are no odds," Bruce says, centering his weight on the balls of his feet and monitoring the rhythm of his pulse. "I'm not gay, and even if I was, I can't have sex because of the whole 'turning in to a big green monster whenever my heart rate gets too high' thing."

"We fight aliens and robots and anthropomorphized incarnations of the elements, and you think your heartbeat is really enough to draw a line that we can't cross?" Clint snorts, but the amusement scatters before it reaches his eyes. "You don't get to live through hell just to pitch a tent at the edge and call it good. If you're saying no because you're not interested, then I get that; I'll back off and we can be kickass teammates together, but if you're saying no because you're giving up without even trying then fuck that.

"I watched you in your apartment at SHIELD," he adds abruptly. "We were supposed to keep you under surveillance, because SHIELD was scared you'd Hulk out and go on a rampage."

Bruce thinks back to his blanket forts and his conversations with Ender and Winston and Noname Protagonist. He knew, of course, that SHIELD was watching him—how else could they have read his supply requests?—but the image of nameless, faceless agents monitoring his actions is much different than the thought of Clint sitting in an office, hunched over a cup of coffee as he watches Bruce's decent into insanity. The heat in his cheeks and ears sparks back to life.

"God you're beautiful when you're flustered," Clint says, closing the gap between them by a few feet. "No, listen, you lasted eight months in solitary and you can still hold up your end of a normal conversation. You could have unplugged from reality completely, but you didn't. You are so much stronger than you give yourself credit for, and I find that extremely hot."

Clint reaches out to rest his thumbs on Bruce's cheekbones and push his fingers into Bruce's hair. The archer leans forward, bringing their foreheads together.

"Your choice, Bruce," Clint says softly, his clear sky eyes filling the expanse of Bruce's vision. "But choose wisely."

The tension of the moment snaps as Bruce coughs up a laugh. "Did you just quote Indiana Jones at me?"

Clint winces. "Nat warned me against using movie references, but sometimes they slip in when I'm not paying attention."

"You're crazy," Bruce tells him. "And you need to take me down off that pedestal you've created."

"Okay. Sorry about that." Clint's hands drop to his sides and he takes a step back.

"Look," Bruce says. "I've been straight my whole life and I've been blocked by the Hulk from any sort of physical relationship since the gamma rays, but if you think you can change those two aspects of who I am then you have my permission to try. You just need to be ready to back off when I tell you to so you don't end up as a red stain on the sidewalk."

Clint's expression breaks into a smirk. "Hey, the Hulk likes me; I can probably get him to join my cause."

"Maybe you should try seducing _him_ instead," Bruce says. He takes a step toward the door, the action jerking his injuries and causing him to hiss. Clint pulls Bruce's arm back over his shoulders and secures his hand on Bruce's hip before the doctor can react.

"Let's try this again," Clint says, guiding the way to the elevator. Inside he flexes his fingers over Bruce's hipbone as they wait for Bruce's floor. The elevator dings and Clint helps Bruce down the hall and into his room, shutting the door behind them without an explanation.

"The 'straight and can't have sex' thing went right over your head, didn't it?" Bruce asks.

"No, I get it," Clint says.

Bruce sits down on his bed, wishes he had chosen pajama pants instead of jeans when he was dressing himself, and waits for Clint to continue.

Clint indulges him. "You're tired, I'm tired; why can't we just be tired together?"

"Are you volunteering to sleep on the floor?"

"You have a king-size bed. You get the side you usually sleep on"—Clint gestures to where Bruce is sitting, before rounding the bed. "And I'll just be over here. Completely innocent."

Clint is grinning, showing off too many teeth for 'innocent.'

Bruce has to give him points for creativity.

"Fine," he says, asking JARVIS to dim the lights as he pulls back the covers and crawls between the sheets. "If you're going to stay you should tell me about your time in the circus," he says to Clint.

Clint focuses on untying his shoes, back to Bruce. "Not right now."

"Why not?"

"No one wants to hear a sad story before they go to sleep. Is it going to make this awkward for you if I take off my uniform?"

Bruce arches a brow, although Clint doesn't turn to see it. "Are you wearing anything underneath it?"

"Boxers," Clint says over his shoulder.

"You do realize you're coming on a little strong, right?"

"It's not like I'm going to do a striptease for you, although if you wanted one…"

"Fine, you can take the uniform off, but I'd prefer it if you held back on the striptease. Or don't," Bruce says, shifting so his back is to Clint and closing his eyes. "Just do it quietly."

Clint's laugh gives way to the sound of a zipper and the rustle of clothing. The mattress shifts as he settles in.

Bruce rolls back over, eyes tracing the patchwork pattern of scars woven over the muscles of Clint's torso. Bruce has never been attracted to men, but that doesn't mean he can't appreciate good features when he sees them. "Why bring this whole thing up now?" he asks.

"Because you look badass shirtless and bandaged up," Clint says with a smirk.

It's nice, Bruce realizes in the haze between waking and sleeping, not to fall asleep alone. He hadn't recognized how much he'd missed this until now. It scares him, because if there's one constant theme of Bruce's life it's that all good things end, and usually it happens sooner rather than later.

Bruce drifts off to the image of blue eyes and quirked lips and the sound of steady breathing from lungs not his own.


	13. Chapter 13

I am so sorry for the long update delay; work has been crazy lately. I'm still completely devoted to finishing this story; it just might take a bit longer than I had initially anticipated. Thank you all so much for sticking with me through this!

I do not own any aspect of The Avengers, or any of Marvel's other creations.

-M.

* * *

Bruce wakes up to pain and, more interestingly, the sensation of a hand wrapped around his wrist. He's not new to the experience of waking up in an unknown setting, but people usually give him a healthy amount of space when that happens.

He opens his eyes and the events of the morning come back to him at the sight of Clint asleep on his side, knees pulled up to his chest and his splinted arm tucked beneath his pillow. His other hand is the one wrapped around Bruce's wrist, and Bruce glances down at it and realizes that Clint has two fingers pressed to his pulse point.

This would be the part in the book, Bruce realizes, where the protagonist notes how young their bedmate looks when stripped of their intensity and professionalism.

Reality doesn't work that way. If anything, Clint looks older.

His jaw is set in a grimace, the hollows under his eyes are darkened by the lamplight neither of them bothered to turn off, and the scars on his arms and torso that had made Clint look intrepid when paired with a smirk now run together into an illustration of the kind of life everyone wants to hear about, but no one actually wants to live.

Clint's eyes open, focus, and then crinkle at the corners as a smile reaches them. "You were watching me sleep," he accuses.

"It was better than staring at the ceiling," Bruce rasps, trying to will away the heat that's trickling into his face.

Clint lifts Bruce's wrist and plants a chapped lip kiss on the backs of his fingers before letting go. "How are you feeling?"

Bruce begins to shake his head, but the movement pulls at the skin of his shoulder and he curtails the progress with clenched teeth.

"Bad, I'm guessing," Clint supplies, pulling back the duvet that Bruce had hiked up over his shoulder. "Wow, okay, let's get you back in the shower."

"Any particular reason, or are you just trying to get me out of my clothes?"

Clint pulls the duvet forward into Bruce's line of sight. The underside is a glossy red that Bruce doesn't remember seeing when he went to sleep.

"It looks like the gauze is pretty well stuck on the burns," Clint observes. "The shower will loosen it and then we can do a rewrap, or maybe call a doctor, depending on how things look under there. Can you get up?"

Bruce tries to make a mental list of things he'd like to do less than get up, but he can't think of anything to put on it. "What if I just lay here until it heals itself?"

The bed shifts, lighting pain through Bruce's wounded arm, as Clint moves to stand. "Come on," Clint says, reaching for Bruce's wrist and squeezing. "Get up and I'll tell you about how I ended up in the circus."

Bruce snorts.

Clint's grip tightens. "Take a deep breath and breathe out in three, two, one."

The snort turns to a hiss as Clint slings Bruce's arm around his shoulders and drags him from the bed.

Black spots overlap at the edges of Bruce's vision, and he can feel his heart rate picking up as he stumbles in Clint's grip. Even with the countdown, he's not ready for the sensation of the bandages yanking on his raw skin. He can't focus.

"Almost there." Clint's voice is garbled. Bruce tries to use it as an anchor, but it's too far away to latch onto.

He locks his legs and shoves hard against the warm solid at his side. It won't be enough to get Clint to safety, but at least he'll have a second's warning.

At least he'll have some idea of what's happening when the Hulk wakes up vicious from the pain.

_Not enough,_ Bruce's mind whispers. _Not enough, not enough, not enough._

* * *

Bruce wakes up to the sensation that someone's extracted his mind from his body. His nerves and muscles, if they're there at all, don't seem to want to respond to any commands. Locked-in syndrome, maybe. He can't feel his heartbeat, either, and wonders whether that should be a concern or relief.

There is no way to keep track of time without his eyes or other senses, but it feels as though time passes before the ears he must still have pick up on murmuring. It's the quick, consistent rhythm of a news reporter rather than a conversation, although as soon as Bruce has decided someone's left him in a room with a television on another tone cuts in, lower and slower, with a bit of a rise at the end. People, then, probably. Live people close enough to be within hearing range.

He focuses on the voices, wills his mind to decipher them, but they cut off before they can slither into coherency.

In the quiet he can feel his thoughts slipping, and without his heartbeat he has no way of knowing whether he's settling into a nap or beginning step one of a homicide. Bruce tries to fight it, but there's nothing to hold onto against the oblivion.

Steve's voice, close at hand, breaks into his fears. "Alright, Dr. Banner, it's time to wake up now."

Bruce's muscles and senses come flooding back after that. He opens his eyes to see the high ceiling of the medical wing.

"Okay, so far so good. How are you feeling?" It's Tony's voice, but it's wrong. Bruce turns his head and is met with the sight of Iron Man in a dented suit.

'_No,'_ Bruce thinks, as he twists his head to the other side where Thor, dressed in scuffed armor, is holding Mjolnir in hand and Captain America is beside him, suit torn and bloodstained and shield half-raised. _'Not again, please, not again.'_

"Okay, Bruce," Tony says. "I really need an answer here."

"Is Clint..?" Bruce asks. The realization that his voice is no longer a rasp flickers in his mind before being drowned out.

Thor's grip on his hammer tightens as Steve's eyes turn toward Tony.

Tony takes a breath deep enough for his microphone to pick up on. "He's still alive, last we heard, but he's not doing well."

Bruce nods, forcing himself to keep going before the information sets in. "What happened?"

"You transformed," Steve says. "JARVIS alerted the rest of the team as soon as it happened, but we don't know what triggered it. By the time we got to him, the Hulk was climbing down the outside of the tower carrying Clint."

"The Hulk wouldn't let us get close enough to really tell how bad things were," Tony adds. "But we could see that Clint was at least unconscious, and that he had some broken bones and a gash on the side of his head. We tried to grab him, but every time we started closing in the Hulk freaked out and began attacking us, which really wasn't the best thing for Clint's condition. He was clearly trying to carry Clint somewhere, so we ended up just trailing him and doing damage control until SHIELD sent out a team with tranquilizers."

"Where is Clint now?"

"Nassau University Medical Center; it was the closest hospital with a trauma unit," Tony explains, feet clanging against the floor as he shifts positions. "He's in surgery right now because the ribs on his right side took a pretty intense beating and two of them punctured his lung. Natasha's there and she said she'd call as soon as they give her an update."

"How about you take a few deep breaths?" Steve says, and Bruce follows his line of vision to the silent cardiac monitor he hadn't realized he was hooked up to. Watching the jitter of his heart rate on the screen is less than helpful, so Bruce closes his eyes and tries to dig past the horror and the guilt and the regret and get down to the sound of his breathing and the feel of the sheet beneath his hands. He gives up after a few seconds when it's clear that his mind won't let him past what he has done, and he can't think of any reason why it should.

"Did the Hulk hurt anyone else?" he asks, opening his eyes.

"No," Thor answers. "He avoided any people in his path and only attempted to injure our team when we came too close."

"It was almost like he realized what had happened to Clint and was trying to help him," Tony adds. "I mean, his method was really shitty, but there wasn't anything in his actions to imply that he wanted to hurt anyone."

"No, he just beat Clint into critical condition and then dragged him away from anyone who could help him. He seems like a fantastic guy. I'm sure the three of you are only here in case he shows back up so you can congratulate him on his great first aid skills."

Thor's expression is dark and Steve slides his weight forward onto the balls of his feet. Whatever reaction they're starting is cut short when Tony says, "Guys, I've got Romanoff on the phone. JARVIS, can you put her on speaker?"

Steve glances down at Bruce, his concern about how Bruce might react to whatever update Natasha has for them nearly audible. He doesn't voice a command, though, before Tony says, "Tell us how he is."

"Clint's out of surgery," Natasha's voice says through JARVIS' speakers, tone sterile. "They moved him to the ICU to monitor in case fluid starts to build up in his chest. They also stitched up the cut on his scalp, but there's some concern that he was hit hard enough to cause brain damage. They won't know anymore until he wakes up."

"Keep us posted," Tony says.

"Of course." A click completes the conversation.

"One of us should head over there as soon as possible," Steve notes, running a hand over his hair.

Thor raises Mjolnir. "I will go. Natasha should not have to wait alone."

"Okay, so that's one very small problem solved," Tony says. His head tips down and Bruce can feel his gaze behind the metal mask. "You gotta help us out here, Bruce; what's the best way for us to help you and the other guy?"

The answer is easy; Bruce has known it since he first heard Tony's voice echo from his suit. It's also the one he knows the rest of the team will try to counter, either out of concern or an ignorant sense of duty.

Lying has never been a skill of Bruce's, so he uses the truth, instead. "I don't think I'll be much of a liability for the next few hours," he says, closing his eyes again and taking the deep breaths that will force his pulse to slow. "I'm exhausted; you can have JARVIS monitor me while the rest of you check on Natasha and wait for news about Clint. Nothing much is going to happen until I get some sleep."

With closed eyes, Bruce can't gauge their reactions, but it also means he can focus completely on keeping his heart rate low.

"Are you going to be okay by yourself?" Steve asks, causing Bruce to open his eyes just so he can figure out why Steve apparently missed the last thirty seconds of conversation.

"I told you," Bruce begins, but Steve cuts him off. "No, I mean, are you going to be okay here with the knowledge that Clint is in the hospital because of something the Hulk did?"

Bruce scrambles for something to say. "I can't change what happened, and I obviously can't do anything to fix it," he says. "I might as well get some rest so I can deal with whatever the next step is."

It's hard to read Steve's expression behind his mask, but the sharp line of his mouth tells Bruce he's less than convinced.

Bruce feels pinned to his hospital bed by the weight of the silence, before Steve glances up at the ceiling. "JARVIS, make sure nothing happens to him."

"Of course," JARVIS responds.

Steve looks back down at Bruce and rests a hand on Bruce's shoulder. "Let him know if you need us," he says. "Even if it seems like a minor thing."

"Sure," Bruce says.

Steve nods for a moment too long, before he backs away from the bed and leads Thor and Tony from the room.

Bruce forces himself to wait until the clock on the far wall says six minutes have passed before he says, "JARVIS, I need a favor."

"How can I help you?" the AI responds.

For all of the antsy waiting, it takes Bruce a few seconds to force out his next words. "I need you to connect me with Director Fury."

"Of course, Doctor Banner; right away."


	14. Chapter 14

I do not own any aspect of The Avengers, or any of Marvel's other creations.

-M.

* * *

"I know you'll have to tell Tony that I've left if he asks," Bruce says as he reaches to the back of his closet for the duffel bag Natasha had given him when he first decided to stay at Stark Tower, "but can you tell him it was my choice? And tell the rest of the team that, if they want to help me, they should stay away."

"I can," JARVIS says. "Although Mr. Stark is not the sort to be swayed from his desire to help in whatever manner he thinks is best."

"I know, but try to hold him off as long as possible."

Packing doesn't take long; in spite of Tony's pushiness, Bruce hasn't accumulated much during his stay in the tower that can be stuffed into a bag. Within five minutes, he's zipping up the duffel and powering down his phone to leave on the nightstand.

"JARVIS, don't let any of them think they didn't do enough," Bruce says, slinging the bag onto his shoulder.

He makes it to the elevator before adding, "And tell Clint I'm sorry."

"Of course, Dr. Banner," JARVIS says. "Best of luck."

"Thanks."

There's a sleek black car waiting on the curb outside the main entrance of the tower.

Bruce slows his pace as two men in suits climb out and flank either side of the open car door. He's a threat, of course, but he still tries to prove by his walk that he's not on the edge of losing control.

He makes it within six feet of the car when one of the men steps forward, arm rising, and Bruce tries to brace for the blow that looks aimed for his head when he feels the jab of a needle in his neck. He has enough time to wonder if they measured the dose of sedative for him or for the Hulk before he loses control of his senses completely.

* * *

It isn't a slow waking, and Bruce regrets that immediately, because his eyes aren't even open yet and he already knows exactly what they'll see. The image comes with an ache; the sensation of having been carved out. He'd told Fury they'd have to move him quickly so that the rest of the team wouldn't figure it out until it was too late. He hadn't mentioned that he needed the speed to keep his mind from processing what his decision had meant.

He wonders if Ender, Winston, and the unnamed protagonist have missed him.

The ache grows worse, and Bruce reminds himself that he knew this was coming; that there's only ever been one possible conclusion for him since the gamma radiation and he's known all along that every good thing has an end.

He still waits a few minutes before he can force his eyes open.

The ceiling is wrong.

Wrong shape, wrong color, wrong light fixture.

The hope that maybe he hasn't been placed back into his SHIELD apartment only lasts for an instant before it's twisted into panic. Fury would only decide against sending Bruce back to the apartment if he thought it wasn't enough containment. He'd only pick somewhere else if that place offered a new level of security, something even worse than the last cell.

An electronic melody jars the silence and makes Bruce jump. There's a laptop, he realizes, sitting open on the table beside the bed. He sits up and pulls it onto his lap, reading 'Incoming video call' on the text box in the middle of the screen.

His fingers shake as he clicks 'Accept.'

The screen fills with crinkle-edged eyes and a faint smile. "How are you feeling, Bruce?" Agent Phil Coulson asks.

"Better than a dead man, I'd imagine," Bruce says, trying for flippant, although his voice shakes.

"I've been recomissioned," Coulson explains. "Not even the dead get to rest in peace if SHIELD decides it needs them."

"Digital reconstruction, right?" Bruce studies the man on the screen. "Someone did a good job. Did SHIELD decide I'd respond better to the illision of an interaction with someone I've had a good experience instead of whatever agent you've got controlling your interface?"

Coulson's image gives a broader smile, exhaustion bleeding through at the edges. "Fury may have exaggerated my death slightly."

"I watched the security footage from the attack and Natasha got us a copy of your medical report," Bruce says. "You flat-lined and the EMTs were unable to revive you. They declared you dead on-site."

"I was, technically," Coulson agrees. "They didn't get my heart started again until I was in the med unit."

"And Fury brought you in to chat with the unstable ex-Avenger. Is this to ease you back into your job?" Even as he says it, Bruce wills it to be untrue. He would much prefer the idea of a fake Coulson who will keep him company to a real Coulson who will leave him to his own insanity as soon as the agent is well enough to take up his old position.

And, oh, that's new; the immediate panic for what's to come. It wasn't this quick the last time he was under SHIELD's control. Although, of course, last time he didn't have the experience he does now.

The memory of Clint's mouth, warm and dexterous against his own, rises abruptly in Bruce's mind, lasting only a second before it's replaced by the image of Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America explaining the Hulk's latest rampage.

"Somewhat."

Bruce waits for Coulson to add to that thought, but the agent doesn't.

"Do you know how Clint's doing?" Bruce asks instead.

"Romanoff reported a little over an hour ago that he woke up and was able to answer basic memory questions, but that he doesn't seem to remember the attack. They should be moving him out of the ICU within twenty-four hours. If he heals the way they expect him to, the doctors will be lucky if they can get two weeks before he breaks out."

"Good," Bruce breathes. The relief is overwhelming. The Hulk has killed before—Bruce can replay every memory of stumbling back to awareness and having to take stock of just how much his latest lapse in control had cost with more detail than he can draw from any other recollection in his mind—but, somehow, the idea that it could be a teammate—could be Clint—made the potential so much worse.

But Clint's alive and healing, and Bruce realizes that that's enough to override the panic at being locked back away. It's a trade he'd make again, easily, if given the choice.

"The rest of the team doesn't seem to be aware of your departure yet," Coulson's voice says, and Bruce realizes he's been lost in his thoughts for some time. Less than a day back in solitary and his social skills are already scattering.

"JARVIS knows that I'm gone, but I don't think he'll mention it to them unless they ask," Bruce notes. "They might try looking for me after they've spent so much time arguing with Fury."

Coulson inclines his head. "Fury's already expecting that."

"Will they be able to find me if they look?"

"It's not impossible," Coulson says. "but it'll take them time. Barton and Romanoff don't know about your new apartment, and there's no mention of it in any of SHIELD's records. They might be able to track how we moved you, but that's been pretty thoroughly covered up."

Bruce nods. "Have Fury tell them this was my choice and then try to keep them as busy as possible—he could have someone line them up a few public appearances if things are quiet on the earth-saving front. Tony will probably try to look for me because he's stubborn, and Steve might join him because of loyalty to the team, but if they can see that the Avengers are better off without me then they'll lose interest eventually." In that moment, Bruce can't tell what he wants. The sooner the team gives up their search, the easier it will be for him to accept that this is his new life; no going back. But if they do search—and, worse, if they're successful—then Bruce will have to tell them himself that he wants to stay. He'll have to stand on this side of an open door and look into their faces and try to convince them that this is better for everyone. Regardless of how true that may be, Bruce isn't sure he has the resolve for it.

"I'll let him know your thoughts," Coulson says, before his tone changes. "Is there anything you need?"

"I'm not sure; I haven't had the chance to look around yet." It's a struggle to keep his voice even and bite back the plea of 'Please don't leave me' that gurgles in Bruce's throat. This is only day one, he reminds himself. He's not allowed to beg on day one.

"The set up is pretty similar to your last apartment," Coulson explains. "Just write down anything you want on the whiteboard and we'll do what we can to accommodate."

"Sure," Bruce says. "Thanks."

Coulson nods. "I'll check back in soon."

The connection ends, leaving Bruce staring at an unchanging screen.

He watches it for a few minutes, willing whoever is using Coulson's image to come back, before he nestles the laptop into the duvet at his side and climbs out of bed to look around.

The apartment isn't any bigger than the last one SHIELD had put him in, and less than half the space he had at Stark Tower, but the layout is new and the color scheme is different—muted greens and browns with forest photos this time—and it's enough to keep Bruce occupied for a bit as he noses through cupboards and reorganizes drawers.

The space is well-stocked; the fridge and pantry are lined with foods Bruce had requested during his last stint in captivity, and the closet by the front door is full of supplies to continue the experiments he had begun last time. He wonders if this is some kind of reward; save the world a few times and you earn some extra consideration to the contents of your cell.

Whatever pride Bruce has grown back since his last time with SHIELD makes him wish he weren't quite so grateful for that.

* * *

Bruce is startled to the point of dropping his mug of tea when his laptop rings again, sometime around mid-afternoon the following day. Coulson's image again fills the screen when Bruce accepts the call, leaving the tea to stain the carpet.

Their conversation is more stilted than the last after Coulson updates Bruce on Clint's improving condition. Coulson refuses to answer any questions about the rest of the team beyond what Bruce has already learned from his, once again limited, internet connection, and Bruce is too scared of being left alone to press for answers. Instead, he settles for superficial questions about Coulson's health in light of being dead.

It takes eight days for Bruce to stumble across the Youtube video.

He reads about it in a blurb on a news site, and by the time Bruce watches the clip himself, it has six and a half million hits.

The video—shot, Bruce assumes, with a Stark phone, given the perfect picture quality in spite of the constant shaking of a weak camera hand—makes Bruce run to the sink to empty his stomach before he's made it twenty seconds in. The subject of the clip is wounded, badly. The worst of the injuries are bound up in white and cream wrappings, but mottled bruises seep out between the folds and Bruce strings the glimpses of them together like constellations into the shape of behemoth hands. Threaded through it all is an acrid blend of anger and dread that Clint can't seem to keep from his eyes as he stares into the camera.

"My name is Clint Barton, current Avenger and former SHIELD agent," the archer says, words just a bit too slow, as if he has to concentrate to deliver them in the correct order. "Earlier this week, my friend and fellow Avenger, Bruce Banner, the Hulk, was abducted from outside Stark Tower by SHIELD agents. I believe he is being held against his will because SHIELD thinks that the Hulk might one day pose a threat if sufficiently provoked."

The video pans at a sharp angle, showing the contents of a hospital room, as Clint switches his grip on the camera.

"They've done this to him before, and the Hulk repaid them by helping defeat Loki and the Chitauri. He is not a threat and he doesn't deserve to be locked away like one. If you have any information that could lead to his rescue, please contact me or one of the other Avengers. You will be more than compensated if your tip leads us to him."

The view shifts again, Clint fumbling for the button to stop the recording, before the shot turns back to his face. "Bruce, I don't give a damn what Fury and JARVIS have to say. Fucking figure out a way to contact us and Tony and Thor will be there to pick you up before you've finished sending it." Clint takes a breath, ready to start on a new sentence, before pausing. He looks into the camera for a moment, before the view tilts once more and the video ends.

Bruce reads a few of the comments before he stretches out on the couch and stares up at the ceiling.

His muscles are stiff by the time he finds the desire to move again.

* * *

He and Coulson don't talk about it, although there's no chance SHIELD hasn't seen the video, or the wave of support in its wake. At first Bruce searched through it for hours, terrified that SHIELD would decide it wasn't something he needed to see and the internet blocks would slide into place.

Four days later, though, Bruce can still access the Tumblr blogs and Twitter feeds plastered with his image and filled with support, can still get updates on the team's latest requests for information—everything from Steve holding a press conference to Thor appearing on The View.

Bruce wonders if they have any idea how much harder their concern makes things for him, and then hates that he can twist their worry into something he finds distasteful. He is not anything close to the selfless, humble man their interviews make him out to be. They have taken the idea of him and twisted it into an effigy, a fragile figurine held together only by their warped memories and idealism.

A hero to the masses, a savior of mankind, an unwavering defense against the villains of the universe.

Bruce reads about himself until he can't stomach anymore, and then spends his days thumbing through biographies and talking to Coulson about nothing. All sensationalism fades eventually, and when the team realizes that the public has lost interest and they're still not any closer to finding Bruce, they will let go and move on.

It will take longer than Bruce had originally anticipated, but eventually things will calm down and the world will be safe from him.

Worry settles into the crevices of his mind, because 'the world' is not the original term he'd used when he formed that thought. Originally, he tries not to recall, it had been 'Clint.'


	15. Chapter 15

I do not own any aspect of The Avengers, or any of Marvel's other creations.

-M.

* * *

Ellen DeGeneres gives a gasping, flushed-face laugh as she drops back into her chair. "Well, at least I don't have spend any more time wondering how you fit into the cat suit," she says.

"Self defense is always a good work out," Natasha agrees with an easy grin as she follows Ellen to the chairs. She's dressed up as a civilian; flats and jeans and a sweater that accents her curves, topped off with warm make up and a 'girl behind the Widow' demeanor.

"Alright," Ellen says. "So now that I can at least pretend that I know fifteen different ways to stop an attacker with my bare hands, let's talk about why you really agreed to come on the show."

Natasha's smile straightens out, and she tucks a loose curl behind her ear before folding her hands together in her lap.

Ellen continues, "I'm sure by now we've all heard of the Free the Hulk movement, and it's obviously already gotten a lot of grassroots support, as well as attention from some pretty big names, so what's the next step now that the concern is out there?"

"First of all, I want to express how grateful we are for the way people have rallied behind this," Natasha says, eyes, soft-edged and earnest, scanning the audience and cameras before returning to Ellen. "The responses have been overwhelming, and we've been so encouraged by everything that's happened so far."

"It's been such an amazing thing to watch," Ellen agrees. "I mean, you've managed to unite people across the globe with this."

Natasha nods. "There's also been a lot of discussion about things like how much power one organization should have over public safety in the US, and to what level that organization should be accountable to the public it protects, which are clearly wonderful questions that should be talked through, and ones that I, being a former SHIELD agent, find especially important."

"Makes sense."

"I'm just worried that all the discussion about these broader issues will slow up our main objective at the moment, which is to get Bruce Banner out of SHIELD custody," Natasha says, every aspect of her posture and expression pulled taunt with concern. "I was one of the agents assigned to monitor Bruce the last time he was in captivity, so I know first-hand the psychological damage that was done. Because of SHIELD's paranoia, they kept him completely cut off from all human interaction. He was in solitary confinement for months, and by—"

Natasha's voice cuts off as Bruce closes the tab. He stands, walks into the kitchen to check the contents of the fridge, and walks back to the couch; the same lap he's made seventeen times since waking up this morning. Not that there's been much distinction between waking and sleeping this week; Bruce can't sit still for more than five minutes, can't lie down without getting up just to pace the apartment, can't sleep unless it's the eventual slide into complete exhaustion, only to wake an hour or two later and repeat the pattern.

Coulson still chats with him, but the sessions grow shorter with each passing day as Bruce slips away from the screen sooner, his flicker of interest growing dimmer with each conversation.

His imaginary friends won't visit him, even when he tries to focus enough to summon them up in his mind.

_'The team will come,'_ Bruce's thoughts whisper to him a thousand times a day. _'Just another minute, just another door to unlock or fuse to blow and they will come.'_

There is nothing crueler than a rigid hope in something that should not—_cannot—_happen.

Bruce was ready for insanity, of course, but nothing like this.

This is what he explains, in curtailed gestures and agitated words, to the agent behind Coulson's face on the twenty-third day of his captivity.

Coulson is quiet for so long that Bruce has to carry the laptop into the kitchen and start the kettle just to keep himself somewhat focused. "What do you want, Bruce?" Coulson finally asks.

Bruce runs his fingers back into his hair, digging nails he hasn't cut in some time into his scalp. "Let me talk to them."

Coulson shakes his head. "You know I can't do that."

"Not in person, obviously," Bruce says. "Let me make a video. SHIELD can edit it as much as they want, they just—I just need to tell them to stop."

"I'll talk to Fury," Coulson says, and the chat ends.

Bruce's computer is silent the next day, and again the day after. His request, he is realizing with horror, was too much. That, or Coulson's life model decoy was actually Coulson in the flesh all along, and he's finally reached the point where he's well enough to return to work.

In the end, the reason doesn't matter. Bruce is alone, except for the damnable hope that grows mold in the creases of his brain and sets fire to his nerves.

On the third morning of silence, Bruce begins building a blanket fort to trump his previous attempts in his last apartment. He starts by pulling the mattress off his bed and dragging it into the living room to serve as the floor, before gathering every piece of furniture in his apartment into the small space of his living room, lining the walls and forming the framework for his structure.

Bruce is halfway through anchoring the blankets to his fort when his computer begins ringing. He scrambles, bumping into the side table by the couch and collapsing the network of blankets he's just created as he maneuvers to get to the other side of the ring of furniture, where his laptop is perched on the kitchen table. He manages to click 'accept' before the caller gives up.

A spasm travels Bruce's spine; Fury glares at him through the screen.

"Coulson tells me you want to make a video," the Director says.

"Yes," Bruce says, and wonders if Fury is referring to Coulson by name because he is, in fact, alive, or if he is just feeding the illusion.

"And you actually believe there's something you could say that would change the world's mind about you being here?"

"No, but I don't really need to." Fury looks less than thrilled with Bruce's ambiguity, and the doctor rushes to explain. "I just need to convince Steve and Natasha. If Steve is on my side, he'll call off the Avengers, and if Natasha agrees with him she can dissuade Clint."

Fury studies him for a long time, before saying, "You're welcome to try, although we won't release it without reviewing the video and deciding whether it will help or add to the issue.

"Bruce," he adds, authority rumbling in his voice. "I know you returned to SHIELD by choice, but I also know that preferences change. Try to slip anything in that would lead the Avengers to find you, and you will lose all communication privileges indefinitely."

Bruce's first instinct is to take his request back. He can live with the torture of anticipation if it means he'll still be allowed to talk with someone occasionally—better that then going back to the silence—but this isn't just for him, Bruce realizes with sudden conviction. The rest of the team deserves closure just as much as he does, because if it had been one of them who reverted to captivity he wouldn't consider a few words of consolation from an AI good enough reason to give up. He'd hunt too, of course, because that's what any decent friend would do.

He shouldn't, Bruce realizes, expect anything less from them.

Fury is still waiting for a response.

"I'll be careful," Bruce promises.

"Good," Fury says, ending the conversation.

Bruce spends the next hour and a half drafting an outline of what he wants to say. He discovers it's hard to find a medium between, "I'm fine, I appreciate your concern, please stop looking," and a rambling apology for what the Hulk has done and a plea for his own imprisonment, ending in a list of the reasons why the team would be better—and the world safer—without him.

It doesn't help that Bruce keeps catching himself no longer writing to Steve and Natasha, or even the Avengers as a whole. Instead, he's giving explanations or slipping in remarks that only Clint would appreciate.

By the end, he's left with seven pages of rabbit hole monologues in a legal pad and nothing that he feels will come together into anything other than the disjointed thoughts of a man who has been locked up for too long.

Not the most persuasive way to convince the team he doesn't need rescuing.

He throws the legal pad onto the ruins of his fort and reaches for his laptop instead, turning on the webcam. His digital reflection shows a man with dark eye sockets and fidgeting hands. A compelling argument, but not for the side Bruce wants.

Bruce heads to his room, turning on the floor lamp and sitting down on the naked box spring. The effect is a bit better; the lamplight is softer than the fluorescent bulbs of the living room and helps hide the exhaustion smeared across his face. Bruce tucks one hand under his thigh and forces himself to keep the other on the keyboard, out of the camera's line of sight.

He smooths his expression and studies his image again. His hair is wild and his shirt is wrinkled, but it's less mentally-anguished-prisoner and more scientist-who-got-caught-up-in-his-work.

Good enough.

"Hi," Bruce starts, before realizing he's looking at his screen rather than the camera. He raises his gaze and tries again.

"My name is Bruce Banner, and I'm making this video in response to all of the demands for my release from SHIELD."

Bruce gives into the itch to lift his hand off the keyboard to try to smooth down his hair a bit before he continues.

"I appreciate all of the concern, and it makes sense that the Hulk helped stop some attackers, so he comes off as a hero, but it's not... He attacked Clint Barton; I've haven't seen an interview where any of the Avengers mentioned that. The Hulk isn't a misunderstood guardian; he's violent, and it only takes one slip for that kind of violence to devastate.

"Whatever the team has said about my living conditions at SHIELD is probably well-intended, but exaggerated." He glances around the room and wishes he hadn't stripped it of furniture. A quick view of a nicely furnished home would probably put people at ease. "I have a whole apartment—bedroom, kitchen, living room—and they give me basically whatever I want, including contact with members of SHIELD. The biggest flaw is your tax dollars are probably being spent a little too freely to make me comfortable.

"I asked them to put me here, and if you truly respect my freedom, you should let me make this decision for myself."

Bruce stops the recording and plays it back a few times. It's a solid argument, but that's about it; all facts and no feeling. He turns the camera back on.

"Guys," he says, and this time it's not to the world, not to the internet, not to YouTube; this time it's to the team. "I appreciate that you want to help me, and after you've fixed the world a few times the messiah complex sets in and it seems impossible that you could meet someone you can't save, but I'm not a victim and I'm not a tool; I'm not going to come back just to count the days until the Hulk has his next rampage. Most of you know exactly what it feels like to be turned into a weapon against your will, and maybe it's different for me because I did this to myself, but I still don't have control when the other guy takes over, so I'm going to do what I can with the part of my life that's still mine. Leave me alone, keep saving the world, and have fun being superheroes; you deserve it."

He stops the recording, but starts it again the next second. "Clint, I'm sorry." Bruce licks his lips, trying to form words around the cramping in his chest. "I'm so glad you're alive, and I already know you're going to be a stubborn ass about trying to find me, but I am asking you to please let it go. I tried the freedom thing and it didn't work, so this is where I need to be.

"I hope things work out for you." Bruce laughs, the sound hollow in his ears. "Maybe you'll find your brother after all of this; restore that relationship."

Bruce realizes that his eyes have wandered down to the baseboard running along the far wall. He looks back at the webcam. "I guess that's it. Have fun saving the world."

He saves the file without watching the rest of it and closes the laptop. The jitters are gone for now and nothing's swept in to replace them.

Bruce wanders out into the living room and collapses onto the nest of blankets he hadn't meant to create.

His brain swings instantly from 'nest' to 'bird' to 'Clint,' and the cramping in his chest tightens. He squeezes his eyes shut, breathes in the scent of sheets washed in too much detergent, and waits for the pain to go away.


	16. Chapter 16

A/N: Okay, guys, here's the deal; the incredible woman who has always been an adopted grandmother to me is dying. A week and a half ago she was completely fine; living on her own, driving herself around, and living life. Last Friday night I stayed over at her house because she hadn't been feeling well, and I called 911 in the early morning because she was having trouble breathing. They rushed her to the hospital and preformed several tests, one of which was a brain scan. They found six malignant tumors in her brain that showed signs of bleeding, and two days later she had a massive seizure, triggering a sharp decline in her condition. She asked to spend her last days at home, so my mom and I have been working around the clock to make sure she is as comfortable as possible during this time. All that to say, everything else in my life has been put on hold. I love this story and do plan to continue it, but for now, I am not emotionally stable enough to write anything worthwhile. Here's the little bit that I had written before all of this started, although it's not anywhere close to a complete chapter. I will write more when I can. Thank you all for your interest in and patience with this story; it means a lot to me.

* * *

Bruce is still waiting for the pain to stop four days later, when he clicks on a link that takes him to the video of himself—SHIELD approved, apparently. It went up sometime after he succumbed to sleep in his finally-built fort, and the comments already number in the hundreds.

He scans through them, searching for any that might be from the team. Closure, he's decided, is probably about the only thing that will ease the pain in his chest.

In the end, Bruce doesn't find any, and he wonders if that's because the team hasn't seen the video yet, or because they don't feel the need to respond, or because SHIELD is censoring the whole thing. He makes himself a salad and wills Coulson's call of the day to come soon.

The slide into complete obsession is an easy one. Bruce checks the comments on his video a thousand times a day at minimum, silently begging Clint—any of them, Bruce corrects himself; he'd be happy with any of them—to respond.

Like an idiot, he had thought that the video would help things. In reality, it's only exacerbated the problem.

The realization makes him laugh; of course he would only make things worse for himself. When has he ever not?

* * *

Bruce has stopped asking for things. He's been living the past week off of herbal tea and the dwindling supply of brown rice in his cupboard. It's hard to worry about malnutrition in the context of his days.

He assumes that's what SHIELD is addressing when Coulson tells him to check his porch six days after his video went online.

Instead, he finds a large cardboard box with the label of:

_Bruce Banner_

_c/o SHIELD_

_Wherever the Fuck You're Holding Him_

The box has clearly already been opened, in what Bruce assumes was a search for any contraband, but it's still real and here when he hoists it with shivering arms and brings it inside. He shoves it into his blanket fort and crawls in after. SHIELD may already know everything that's in there, but that doesn't mean they get to watch Bruce react to it. He'll be careful, he swears to himself; he won't let anything happen.

He unpacks the box with reverence: a plate of cookies with a post-it on the plastic wrap that says 'Hope this brightens your day! Love, Jane;' a Russian textbook with 'Stay strong. -Natasha' written inside the cover; sketches of the team—Bruce included—sprawled on the couches in the theater room on one page and gathered around the breakfast table on the next—'I didn't know what you'd want drawings of, so I just sketched stuff from our lives. Sincerely, Steve;' a notebook titled 'If You Can Make The Math Here Work Out, I Will Personally Fund The Building Of Ten Thousand Orphanages In Whatever Countries You Pick' and filled with equations; a pair of sheepskin slippers tied together with a ribbon and a 'From Pepper' tag; and a grocery bag full of store-bought snacks and a note that says 'For my mighty friend in arms, Banner,' which Bruce can only assume is from Thor. And that, Bruce realizes as he tries not to react, is everything in the box.

It's more than enough; so much more than he could ever possibly have hoped for. The fact that SHIELD is letting him get mail at all is amazing, and the possibility that he could have some kind of safe, controlled contact with the outside world should thrill him.

Bruce repeats these thoughts to himself as he organizes the collection, turning the box over to use as a table to display everything on.

He lifts Thor's bag, and an envelope drops onto the mattress. Bruce fights his first instinct to toss the bag aside and scramble for the envelope. Instead, he sets the snacks down safely on their makeshift stand before retrieving it.

The envelope has already been torn open and is still tacky in places along the edge where the flap was ripped into. Inside is a piece of notebook paper that's ragged along the left edge. Bruce unfolds it carefully, eyes flittering over the blocky script, before he forces himself to start at the top, at the part where his name has been written once and retraced a dozen times, the letters bold on the page where the lines piled together.

_Bruce,_

_I was going to make another video, but Coulson said a letter might be better this time around for security whatever, so if you're missing my beautiful face, blame him, and if you're preferring not having to watch me, I guess he can take the credit for that, too._

_Coulson's alive, by the way. He said you already knew, but Nat and I are still getting used to it. I thought she was going to stab him when he showed up at the tower, but that probably would have been counterproductive._

_I swear I'm not writing just to talk about Coulson. Also, for the record, this is not you winning the argument. I don't think you gave staying at the tower enough of a chance, but I do understand why you left. I'm completely fine, just so you know. I don't know if you've been watching the news, but I'm back to work and everything, so if you're worrying about that, you can stop. I've been hurt worse working for SHIELD, although at SHIELD I didn't have to recover in a mansion surrounded by people who kept trying to feed me and make me watch movies with them, so I guess I can blame you for that._

_Anyway, I miss you; the tower sucks without you. Steve wants you to know that we all still consider you an active member of the team, Tony says he's not touching any of your experiments until you get back, and Thor is incredibly concerned that SHIELD may be mistreating you, which probably isn't all that unfounded, so try to give us a sign or something if that's the case. In the meantime, our main objective at the moment is to convince Fury that, since you chose to be locked away of your own free will, you should be allowed to have visitors if you want them. We'll try to get Coulson to keep you updated on that, and he said you could write us back as long as you 'follow proper procedure,' so I am fully expecting a reply and will be crushed if I don't get one._

_Clint_

There's a postscript added in the same handwriting but a different ink, and Bruce assumes Clint had put the letter down and come back to it later.

_P.S. Don't fucking let this be the end of you, Bruce. I can completely understand wanting to keep people safe, but don't just waste away in there. You can do good and the Hulk can do good; work with that. Just make sure SHIELD knows if you decide to transform or anything; they're jumpy shits for some reason._

The ink switches again when Clint adds:

_P.P.S. What happened with the Hulk doesn't change anything, just so you know._

Bruce rereads the letter a half-dozen times, smoothing out the folds and rubbing his thumb over Clint's name. He doesn't know what the second postscript means, not objectively, and his thoughts are starting to run mad with it.

He forces himself to put the paper down, picking up Steve's drawings instead. The sketches have a bit of an old-school comic book style to them, and Bruce wonders if he should ask SHIELD for some frames, before he opts to grab some tape instead, avoiding eye contact with the cameras around his living room as he snatches the tape from the drawer by the fridge and crawls back inside the fort.

He hangs the sketches from the edge of the table holding up one corner of the blanket roof and tapes Clint's note up in between them, before pulling it back down. He needs to be able to hold it; to trace his fingers over the words and pretend that he can smell bowstring wax clinging to the paper.


End file.
